


Act One- Hide Hide Yourself For Now

by Chisza



Series: Hide Hide Yourself For Now [1]
Category: Firefly, The Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:21:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24743026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chisza/pseuds/Chisza
Summary: Riddick doesn't stay with the Necromongers long. A year later, far from any known corner of space, he comes on a ship drifting in space. Stopping to check it out will change his life. RiverickThis is a fresh edit and repost as the first iteration made me want to claw my eyes out on reread. Rated M for violence, language and later lemons.
Relationships: Richard B. Riddick/River Tam
Series: Hide Hide Yourself For Now [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789234
Comments: 30
Kudos: 37





	1. Act One Chapter One

_We caught you plotting murder  
And now the tide is turning  
We'll light our souls, heal our bones  
Upon your empire burning_

_“Spy Hunter”, Project 86_

It took the better part of a year and enough blood to paint the throne room red ten times over before Riddick had the Necromongers where he wanted them. In that time, the majority of the command ranks were replaced, replaced, and replaced again. He didn’t see it as losing ‘his’ people. That would mean claiming responsibility for them, something he’d never asked for.

Instead, he chose to look at it as culling. Those stupid enough to challenge him, thinking that he wasn’t fit to rule them because he didn’t have the fucking scars on his neck? Those were the first to die. They thought that he wouldn’t have been able to kill Zhylaw if Vaako hadn’t made his play. Which in turn made them think that they had a chance at the throne.

Their mistake.

He didn’t care what they thought. He cut down every challenger who came forward and walked over their bodies as he went about the business of taking control. The business of digging his way into the pit, right towards the bear trap at the bottom. He wasn’t fooled. The Necromongers were just a new sort of prison, just a bit fancier than the ones he usually landed in.

He’d get out, eventually.

But first…

He made his final point just before he ordered the departure of the Armada from the known sectors of the Arm. Preparations had been underway for a while now, and he worked on shedding dependents left and right. Aereon didn’t complain when he stuffed her in a scavenged ship and set the autopilot for Quinetessa.

Imam’s woman and her daughter were packed off in a scout vessel with a contingent of guards and a pile of valuables; to start them off in a new life on the closest bit of true civilization he could manage. The guards would drop her off safely on threat of death before their due time, then catch up with the Armada.

The three of them were the last living ties left to cut before he took his dead and those who wished to be dead and dropped them off the edge of the known Universe. Preferably without him, because there was no way in Hell he’d walk quietly to whatever kind of death it was that let something like his predecessor come back.

No. Way. In. Hell.

So, he was satisfied that things were going according to his rough plan. Then, one night as he headed for his quarters and the comfort of their darkness, when someone slithered up behind him and tried to put a shiv in his ribs. It wasn’t really a shiv. Too finely crafted for that. High on adrenaline, he didn’t care enough to call it a knife. The way it was being used made it a shiv anyway.

He didn’t pay conscious attention to who was around him. His mistake. He saw his attacker nearly every day, smelled her everywhere. She’d even tried to go through his quarters, as if he had anything he cared about in there. So far she’d kept her active plotting limited to manipulating her husband, trying to stage a coup. Something must have driven her over the edge this time. If this crazy bitch even knew where the edge was to begin with. He wondered sometimes if she hadn’t _thrown_ herself at the Necros when they arrived on her world.

At the moment, none of that mattered. None of it even occurred to him. He did what he always did. Let the animal take over, keep him from getting more than a scrape along the ribs as he twisted and backhanded her all in one motion. He caught her as she spun, wrapped one arm around her torso and the other hand around her jaw, and gave a sharp twist. The crack of her neck was satisfying as hell.

Then his thinking mind kicked in, and he realized who _exactly_ had just tried to fuck with him. Snarling, he grabbed the body by the hair and dragged it to her quarters, well aware of the fact that every Necro in eyesight was watching. Blood trickled down his side, but he was wearing black. The stuff was more likely to pool in his boot than leave traces on the floor.

Vaako was in his quarters, and Riddick didn’t really give a damn what he was doing. What mattered was what happened next. He dropped his burden in the center of the first room, leathery dress puddling around her and the hair splayed over the floor in a wild tangle of undone braids. And then he waited, watching the expressions chase themselves over his last remaining Commander’s face as he inhaled the corresponding scents. Shock, anger, and finally resignation each had their turn.

After a long moment, the man straightened, fist hitting his chest and barked, “Loyalty to Underverse come,” in a semi-strangled voice.

Riddick nodded and left. Now that he had the absolute loyalty of the one man who could’ve posed a real threat, his sketchy plan for escape crystalized a little further. It was always easier when it he was on his own in slam. Funny how he almost missed those days.

Now here he was, drifting in space and still not free. Vaako saddled him with a pack of Necromonger dogs with as a condition of taking the rest of the Armada to the Threshold.

Kyra’s body in lay in a cryo box in one of the storage compartments. So far he hadn’t found the right planet, the right place, to set her down. This part of the Arm was full of planets that used to sustain life. Until the Necros came through. Now they were mainly wastelands. A few planets had had water and breathable air. They’d stopped, if only to refresh the oxygen scrubbers and supplies. Necro ships, even the smaller Destroyers like the one he’d been saddled with, could travel through space nearly indefinitely so long as they could keep water and 02 losses to an absolute minimum, but restocking was always wise.

He didn’t intend to stop for good until he’d done two things. First, find a place to set Kyra down, a place where the planet itself didn’t try to kill anything that set foot on it. He had no idea who she’d been or where she’d come from before boarding the Hunter-Gatzner all those years ago, but he knew twelve-year-old girls didn’t travel alone and disguised as boys just for the hell of it. She may not even deserve peace, but he wasn’t leaving her body with the Necros and he wasn’t just going to dump her again.

Second, he needed to get rid of these fucking guards. Guards. For him! It was insulting and funny as hell all at the same time. He wasn’t sure if Vaako what told them. Drag him back if he tried to skip out? Or maybe man was actually worried that Riddick’d land on some other planet full of monsters and need the cannon fodder to cover his ass.

Either way, that was the first time the Commander disagreed with the Lord Marshal since Riddick dropped Dame Vaako’s body in the middle of their quarters. He’d almost killed the man, but someone needed to keep the Armada in check as they traveled; keep them from destroying any more planets on their way through occupied space.

Since Vaako had sworn _absolute_ loyalty, and proved it in the bargain, Riddick couldn’t find a way to justify offing the prick. So, growling, Riddick had accepted the Destroyer and its crew along with the company of guards. Maybe he’d just blow the thing up once he found a place for Kyra. He hadn’t figured that part out yet.

A hissing crackle at his elbow warned him to hit the volume on the comm just before the navigator’s scratchy voice deafened him in the echoing room. “Lord Marshal Sir, there’s something you should see.”

Riddick growled and thumbed the toggle. “Coming.” Giving the fair skin and dark hair under the glass one last look, the big man turned and left the hold, lowering his goggles as he went. These Necros might keep things dim in the halls and personal spaces, but the bridge was always lit up like Helion and it was too dangerous to have them lower the lights just so he could see. Plus, the goggles made them nervous.

He was still smirking to himself when he entered the bridge and leaned over the navigator’s shoulder. The man’s scent bloomed in his nose, apprehension and worry like someone dripping a citrus fruit into his nasal cavities. He lifted a lip in a silent snarl before backing off, just a bit. Oddly, the scent didn’t change like it usually did after he’d made his dominance play. Frowning, he leaned forward again. The navigator shifted just enough to give a clearer view of the screen.

“What’s that?” Riddick asked, reaching forward and homing in on the floating dot in the center. It wasn’t an asteroid, or meteors. For a moment his mind flashed to a ship shaking and rattling as bits of comet debris punched through the hull and into the cryo boxes around him. He dismissed it immediately. No comets around. No planets nearby to land and get eaten on.

He tried to zoom again, but the visual sensors were at their limits. Switching over, he ran signals, heat, and finally infrared scanners. Their range varied, but it was the external comms that finally netted results. Three long staticky beeps, three short, and three long. A burst of some unintelligible language, and the beeps again. Frowning, he leaned back to study the screen. The distress code meant a ship which meant humans of some sort or another. A year’s travel past the known occupied areas of space and they’d found a ship in distress. What were the odds?

Curiosity always got him in more trouble than he could keep track of. He had a feeling that would to be his downfall, eventually; but he’d never been one to overlook opportunities to escape, and half the time it was his curiosity that had helped him find those openings and weaknesses in the walls around him. Right now, he had the feeling that he was looking at his way out and away from these necrophiliac freaks. Growling to himself in satisfaction, he clapped a hand on the navigator’s shoulder. The man rocked, his fear scent bloomed again, and then steadied. “Let’s go check it out,” the Lord Marshal rumbled.

>>><<<

Necromongers were not above hijacking converts straight out of space flight. The Destroyer class ships in particular were built for such. Not for the first time he wondered at Vaako’s choice of ship for this little walkabout. It couldn’t take other vessels on board, unless they were about the size of the planet hoppers mercs favored.

It _did_ have an adaptive seal that could lock on to pretty much anything from a trade frigate to a large military cruiser. Guns mounted in a double line forward to aft ensured the cooperation of enemy vessels, knocking them off course and their passengers out of cryo. Nine times out of ten the passengers were so spooked hat the tactic all but guaranteed fresh converts willing to throw themselves on Necromonger mercy. Anything to escape their stranded vessels.

At the time of departure, Riddick had appreciated the guns, scorned the need for the seals, and completely trashed the Conversion chambers. He wasn’t on a recruitment hunt, a point he’d made abundantly clear to the one cleric who managed to bluster his way on board. The cleric had pushed back. Riddick left the man a planet with little soil, much salt water, and freakishly erratic tides. If he stayed alive, it was only by heading as far inland as he could manage and praying for fresh water somewhere. It was more than Riddick had given others in the past.

Now the big man found himself grateful for the seals, as the ship they were approaching looked nothing like any he’d ever seen. Shaped a bit deep sea flyer fish, with sleek lines and flaring wings. The airlock at the aft end was the point of entry. It didn’t take long for the Destroyer to adapt itself, plates of dark metal sliding and grinding before the rubberized sheath slipped out and molded itself to the framework provided.

Standing there, twenty Necros at his back, Riddick realized there might be a problem. The keypad set into the hull next to the airlock was covered in numbers he recognized and characters he didn’t. Patterns of sharp lines mocked him as he growled under his breath and tried to think. The large button next to a tiny blinking light seemed as good a risk as any and he stabbed at it with one finger, already bracing himself for an explosion.

Instead something beeped. A feminine voice spoke to him in that strange language, and the doors of the unknown vessel hissed open, leaving Riddick and his men staring into a small cargo bay turned to hell.

The rusty tang of dried blood and the stink of burst entrails. He didn’t take off his goggles; the bright emergency lights that flashed around the edges of the bay made the dark-to-light ratio too erratic for his unshielded vision. Pools and splashes of darker color painted the room in erratic loops and squiggles.

In the center of the floor was a larger puddle. He looked up to see the origin. Face a rictus of pain around the spear protruding from her mouth, pale skin hanging in patches and flaps around her abdomen and splayed legs, the woman hung. She was supported by not only the spear that had been rammed through her from nethers to nose, but by the chains through her ankles as well. Two men dangled, one on each side, like some obscene sort of jewelry. One skewered through the stomach and the other gaffed in the ass.

Dried blood coated them all. Only extreme self-control kept Riddick from holding his nose at the stench. He’d smelled worse, but that was usually in the slam, and not along with a formerly living version of some of the statues that decorated Necropolis. Behind him he the Necros shifted. He dredged up a smirk. They might have bad taste in art, but when it came to actual fighting they killed and moved on, not leaving even their enemies to linger long at Death’s door. They wanted as many left alive and intact as they could manage, but had no use for those dead or dying. A line drifted through his head, from some long ago book in the long ago Ranger training. Something about Davy Jones and a ship crewed by the dead. It fit the Necros to a T.

Figuring he’d let the men stew long enough, Riddick growled and turned. “Search the ship. Supplies, signs of life.” He snagged the mousy navigator by the elbow as the warriors moved around him. “Origin. Where did it come from?”

The man nodded and stepped around him, jaw set and determinedly _not_ looking at the gruesome chandelier. Riddick followed more slowly, examining as he went. A weight bench in one corner and stacks of shipping crates in another. A locker full of weapons, mainly unfamiliar guns. A small box in the corner of the locker held clear bullets full of translucent liquid.

Frowning, he kept one of bullets and put the box back. Then he sorted through the guns, hunting for the one that looked like it would take the ammo. An empty rack answered his question, but before he could go any further, the comm on his wrist beeped.

“Lord Marshal Sir.” The navigator. “I believe I have found some answers. The bridge is directly forward of the cargo bay, Sir.” Something in the man’s voice quivered and Riddick snarled silently to himself. More fear smell on top of old blood and ruptured bowels. Just what he needed.

The bridge was tiny; barely room enough for one, and no copilot chair in sight. The parts of the wall that weren’t windows were covered in panels and banks of dimly lit screens. Over those was a man, staked by hands and feet, with dried intestines hanging out of his abdomen.

Riddick stepped around the mess on the floor and slipped in next to the pilot’s seat, where the navigator worked furiously. “Well?” he rumbled, crossing his arms.

The navigator looked up and then keyed the screen. “Sir, it appears that the vessel is human in origin. Most likely from the first people of the Exodus from Earth.” His lip lifted in silent scorn for a people who fled their home rather than taking their rightful deaths, but in the next moment his face was smooth again. “I am unclear as to the second language, but the first appears to be a form of-”

“Common,” Riddick interrupted, and leaned over for a closer look. Sure enough, mixed in among the sharp lines and squared off characters were a few familiar words. Frowning, he looked at the navigator. “Hound?”

“It appears to be the name of the ship, my lord. From what I can tell,” a few more buttons and a dial turned. “This was a mercenary vessel carrying cargo. The captain’s log cuts off abruptly. I cannot read the rest of it, but the last word is in Common.” The man turned to look at his leader. “Reavers.”

Riddick frowned and sat back, eyeing the corpse crucified to the wall and ceiling. That explained the guns. And probably the strange bullet, too. Tranq guns. The missing space in the gun locker was about big enough for something long range. So why was it missing? There wasn’t enough space on this boat to turn around properly, much less fire a long-range gun. What could they be carrying that they thought they still needed to keep it under, even in cryo?

That brought another realization. A quick glance around the cabin confirmed it. No cuffs. No tubes. No vials of cryo drugs. Frowning, he turned to the Necro in the pilot’s chair. “Have they found the cryo equipment yet?”

That startled the man. He jerked around to look. Riddick curled a lip. Necros. Fools. They didn’t travel in cryo. Their vessels were too slow. The grav drives on them didn’t play the same havoc on the body that supra light travel did. Even if it did, they’d probably enjoy it. Either way, the rest of the known universe _did_ use cryo for space travel. Why not this ship?

Growling, Riddick pushed past the man and started his own search, poking his nose in hatches and down the short halls. The boat smelled lived in. There was a galley, bunks, even a head that proved the crew was up and around enough to want and take showers, short as they may be with the limited water possible on this thing. All the smells were old, stale, and covered over with the continuous stench of dried blood,. Still no sign of cryo during travel.

It was a whiff of antiseptic that proved him wrong. His men missed the spot, searching for the obvious and not thinking to look for cubby holes and hiding places. He’d just wandered out of the tiny infirmary and back into the equally tiny cargo bay when the floor _thunked_ hollowly under him and the movement of the grate stirred the air enough for him to smell it. And hear it.

Old sweat, the antiseptic, drugs of some sort. And a faint heartbeat. He turned, just to make sure it wasn’t the infirmary fooling his senses, but the room was just as stale and foul as the rest of the boat. A few steps got him off the section of decking and he crouched for closer inspection.

He growled when his men came up behind him. Metal boots on metal decking were not a good combination for quiet. Waving them to a stop, he bent over and sniffed. The scent was stronger down here. There were tiny divots along the edge of the metal plate.

His fingers were too big, so he unsheathed one of his curved shivs from his belt and went to work. One of the more enterprising of his men caught on and knelt to work on the opposing side of the plate with his own blade. Between the two of them they got it loosened enough to slip their fingers in under.

Riddick met the man’s eyes with his goggles and nodded. They lifted as one. The plate caught on some something and brought them up short. The Necro stumbled, but Riddick snarled and gave a wrench, snapping whatever’d hooked into the plate. The solder lurched forward but caught his end, and together they set the plate aside.

The smell hit Riddick’s nose like a slap in the face. He wondered briefly if there’d been some sort of hermetic seal on the hidden compartment, damaged during the struggle with whatever had attacked this ship. Frowning, he stared down into the hole, peeling back his goggles for a better look.

It was a box. Or a coffin. It could have been either. But the blinking lights on one corner of its surface and the heartbeat inside argued against the coffin theory. Was this their cryo then? It was probably their cargo, considering the care they’d taken to hide it from a casual observer. Were they mercs or were they smugglers? Slavers? Riddick snorted to himself and shrugged. It didn’t really matter one way or the other. Now he had someone to answer his questions. Provided they could wake them up. Stepping back, he gestured at his men. “Get it out,” he growled. “And be careful.”

“Sir?” asked the Necro who’d helped him get the decking up. Riddick snarled at him as he pulled his goggles down and moved out of the way, further into the cargo bay. The man didn’t argue further. A fist to his chest in salute and he turned back to the hole and its contents as the warriors tried to figure out how to get the box out.

Riddick snorted and went back to the weapons locker, leaving half his attention on his men as he looked for hidden catches and levers. Had to be something else hidden in here if the guns were so easy to get to.

He’d emptied the thing of guns and lifted the racks by the time the men got the box out. He was in the middle of pulling the back panel from the locker, revealing an impressive set of shivs and was that a _sword_ , when the thud and scrape of metal on the floor behind him caught his attention.

Frowning, he drifted back over to the box. Something about the scent had changed, but between the smell of the bay and the Necros it was hard to pin down. Growling an order, he got the men to stand still while he listened. Sure enough, the heartbeat was louder. Still slow, but rising steadily. He cocked his head and leaned over the box, resting his hands on either side of the display readout as he tried to pin down the scent. It wasn’t acrid or acid like fear or burning like anger. Like cool water, it threaded through the drugs, antiseptic, mint, and sweat. If he had to take a guess, he’d almost say it was anticipation, but without a baseline read on whoever it was, he couldn’t say for sure. One way to find out.

Stepping back, he nodded at his men. “Open it.”

Four of them stepped forward, ceremonial blades ready to dig into the seams and pry, but before they could complete the action, the navigator stepped out of the hall. “My Lord, if I may?”

Riddick turned and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

The slim man held up what looked to be a data pad in one hand, shining with words both familiar and unfamiliar. “I believe this may work better.” That said, he glanced at the pad, centered it over the display on the box, and slid it into place with a soft click. In his other hand he held…a hand. Riddick snorted as the navigator pressed the hand of the dead man who must have captained the ship to the data pad. It beeped, blinked, and a tinny voice said, “Palm print accepted. Cryo disengaging in three…two…”

With a click and a hiss, the seal let loose and the top half of the box lifted a few millimeters. The navigator stepped back to let the warriors closer. They had the lid off in short order. Riddick shoved his way into the mass of armored men. They didn’t notice him at first, attention focused on the open cryo box. Riddick growled. That shocked the Necros into remembering he was there. They parted before him. Still rumbling, he stepped up to the box, inhaling deeply as he tried to figure out the meaning of the scent of cool water.

He didn’t have long to wait. Its occupant’s eyes popped open just as he reached the foot of the box. Huge and dark in a pale face, surrounded by straggling dark hair, the girl took less than half a second to scan the armored bodies around her before she _moved_.

Two men died, eye sockets bleeding, before any of the Necros registered her attack. Two more fell, throats bubbling, before the rest could reach for the weapons. If it hadn’t been for the fact that these men had put themselves under his protection, made him alpha of their screwed up little pack, Riddick would have just sat back and watched as the girl danced her way through the pile.

Eight down by the time he bulled his way into the center of the fight. Another two as he kicked one end of the cryo box out of his way. She had a blade strapped to her wrist. She drove it back over her shoulder, into the eye socket of the soldier behind her. Grabbing the man’s gun hand, she used the weapon on another. The first went down with a gurgling cry, the second crumpled more quietly.

Then Riddick was there, fist swinging. Straight through empty air. She ducked, rolled under his arm, and popped up behind him. He turned, trying to catch her, and she jumped again, rolling backwards over his shoulder. Her feet struck another of his men. She followed him down, knees wrapped around his neck as she rolled to one side. The man’s neck snapped just before she released her hold and tumbled backwards into a crouch.

But she cornered herself with that last move. She’d landed in the passageway leading to the bridge. Riddick could tell from the lack of glowing light in that direction that the Navigator had closed the hatch on the room before coming down to the cargo bay. Behind him, the soldiers cursed and pulled various weapons. Growling, he waved at them. Last thing they needed was guns in a tight space.

The girl inched away, hands at the ready. For every step he took forward, she took one back. The emergency lights flashed and spun overhead, making it harder to judge distance, but his nose worked just fine. The scent of cool water remained, overlaid with something like sour fruit and a bit of charcoal to leaven the mix. The drugs burning out of her system, maybe. He thought briefly of the missing tranq gun, wishing he’d found it so he didn’t have to risk a shiv in the gut just to get close to this girl. He’d thought Kyra was wild. This girl gave a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘trapped animal’.

“She will not sleep again!” the girl shrieked as she threw herself forward, shiv in hand and the last lingering bits of sanity completely gone from her eyes. Her attack carried none of the grace she’d displayed not two minutes past. The sour fruit smell hit him like a hammer, along with the citrus of pure terror, but he managed to reach out and catch her wrist. A twist and a yank and he had the other one as well.

The girl shrieked again, something in that unknown language, and bit at his hand. Feet flailed. Glad that he’d remembered to put on his armor, he growled. She was slipperier than an eel, but he got one of her legs pinned between his knee and the wall. She snarled and shrieked again. His ears rang with the noise.

With one final effort, he brought his fist around to her temple. A last gurgling cry and she was, finally, silent.


	2. Act One Chapter 2

_Would the moon rise, the sky will fall  
Would the moon rise, the sky will fall  
And I'm not going down with the rest of you  
You don't have to believe whatever I'm saying  
You don't have to break to whoever I'm praying  
If that don't change, what's gonna happen?  
And I'm not going down with the rest of you!_

“Holy Dove”, Civil Twilight

Pain woke her, dragged her up from the depths. She hadn’t been asleep. She knew that much. Sleep brought rest. And peace. At least, it did for others. For her there was little difference between sleep and unconsciousness, except for the dreamings she picked up around her. Something burned in her veins now. Not the drugs that made her sleep. After a moment’s consideration, she decided on exhaustion. All that time with her body shut down and she was still tired. Odd, that.

Not nearly so odd as the minds around her. It was her last coherent thought before their screams hit her brain. She jolted forward, trying to give voice to others’ agony. Something yanked her backwards. Not human hands. Cold impersonal restraints. They echoed with the embedded agony of who knew how many people.She shrieked again and tried to flail, but she didn’t have enough slack to move either hands or feet. Pain, needles, men drowning in blood. Eyes open or shut, she couldn’t unsee the vision of her mind’s eye. She wailed as she reached for her Mother, Captain Daddy, Simon.

Nothing. Nothing but pain behind walls.

And curiosity. That’s when she heard it. Someone breathed low and deep, but steady. Warmth near her feet told her the unseen person’s position relative her body. Metal slid over a hard surface as her observer sighed and shifted position. Turning her head, she realized that her eyes were open, but her surroundings were mostly dark. Here and there a ghostly light burned and blinked, but for the purposes of estimation, it might as well have been pitch black.

Panting, she tried to get a grip on her mind. It was so hard without amygdalae! The drugs blurred her thoughts, dragging forth visions of snarling men and needles cold. She whimpered and shook her head, trying to banish the past and focus on the _now._ Amusement, curiosity, anger, and…worry? They rolled off of whoever sat near her feet as the person dragged metal over metal for a second time. She latched onto the mind, wrapping herself around it, hoping the absence of screams would block the rest of the feelings battering her brain to pieces.

Then she caught the reason he wasn’t screaming into the void. She threw herself out, crying in horror as she did her level best to claw her way free of her restraints. A man walked among the living horrors. He sat unfearing in the midst of those whose minds existed two steps away from Reavers! He didn’t fear what they almost were. He commanded them!

The amusement faded and the anger in that mind rose to the fore. A giant hand clamped over her mouth. “You want to be quiet girl?” His voice was deep, like chocolate and coffee melted and poured together.

Almost she let it calm her. But did he know what lived in this place? What he courted? Panting through her nose, she wrinkled her lips and lunged. She felt bone between her teeth before the man yanked his hand away. Movement in the air around her gave warning and she lurched sideways, just barely missing the blow that would have sent her back into sleep. She couldn’t duck the other hand though, the one with the blade that rested, cold and sharp, against her neck.

“Shut up, damn you,” he growled.

She didn’t quite freeze, but she stopped thrashing. That seemed to satisfy the man, because the blade left her neck. What came next did a better job of immobilizing her than the knife ever could. A pair of silvery eyes, gleaming in the residual light around them, came into view.

She blinked and stilled completely. Her mind raced, but she didn’t bother to catch it, mesmerized as she was by that gaze. The owner tilted his head and took another of those deep breaths. Inches away now, she could make out a broad nose and full lips. Something on his brow. A skim of his mind revealed goggles. Pressing a mental hand a bit closer to the steadily burning flame of his mind, she realized that bright lights would incapacitate him while he kept the goggles off. With the goggles _on_ , she’d need considerably more.

She couldn’t find it in herself to care. Until his nose nearly touched her neck. Then she turned and snapped at his ear, snarling under her breath. She may be tied down, but that did _not_ make her weak or defenseless and if he planned on following through with the things running through his imagination, she’d show him _exactly_ how useless a cup around his genitalia would be.

The man jerked back. She tensed, waiting for intent to become action. But he lowered his fist and leaned back, studying her with those silver eyes. She kept her gaze locked on his. For all the contained anger in his heart, his was the one voice in this place not screaming for what it had given up. For something lost, yes. But not given up.

Finally he chuckled and tilted his head. “Vicious little thing aren’t you?”

She snorted, “Like calls to like. Blades come out like claws unsheathed in anger and fear.” She tilted her head opposite his. “Reflexes good. Breathing even. Heart rate…” she paused. “Slightly elevated.”

The eyes blinked and he rumbled deep in his chest. Briefly she toyed with the idea of catching that sound and sleeping with it under her ear. It was almost better than the sound of Mother’s engine through the hull. Mother. Where was she now? Where was the family? Had they gotten away safely? She’d felt Jayne hidden behind a stack of crates, gun in hand, just before she’d gone under. Had he and Captain Daddy saved the others?

“Hey.” A warm hand touched her shoulder. “I said, you got a name?”

He was frowning at her. She must have slipped away. Shaking her head to clear it, she sighed. “The water drips and flows and builds and flows again. Gathers and gathers, ‘til it overruns its bounds and gravity pulls pulls pulls from the heights of elevation to the marshes of the delta. ‘Til it flows to the sea and evaporates. Condensation, cold air. Rain. Fall fall fall to the ground to start the journey again.” She blinked up at him. “The girl has given her name. What is his?”

There was the knife again. The man had the temper of a hungry wolf. But the claws of a tiger. What sort of animal was he, really? She tried to turn her head to follow him as he moved, but the blade slid along her neck and blood trickled down her neck. Resigned, she stopped moving and waited. He would speak soon enough; tell her what she’d already learned from his mind. And she liked to wait for the voice. It fell over her like a warm blanket, chasing away the cold in her head. Finally he sighed and removed the blade. “Cool one aren’t ya?”

She shrugged, not caring if he could see her or not. “Knives like claws, flash in the dark. Honest edge, honest blood. Not needles and lies. If you had come with needles and lies, she would have driven them back into your brain. She can do that, you know.” She grinned up at him. “Kill you with her brain.”

“Kill me with your rambling, maybe,” he muttered as he sheathed the knife. “So, crazy girl. Name for a name, is it?”

“She has given you hers,” she replied primly and stared at one of the blinking lights off to one side. It was synced with her heart rate. Which, like his, was slowing down. Good.

“That’s a long ass name.”

She giggled. “River does not take so long to say. Not as long as Richard B. Riddick. Murderer, escaped convict. Lord Marshal.”

Some distant part of her mind screamed at her, telling her that poking a wolf with a stick was just as stupid as diving headlong into a pile of Reavers. She told it to shut up, she’d killed the Reavers hadn’t she? The voice just gibbered, saying that they hadn’t been in their right minds and this man. This animal. He was mostly in his. Except when he wasn’t.

“How do you know my name?” His fists landed on the mattress to either side of her head as he roared, beautiful eyes narrowed in a glare. She heard running footsteps in the corridor as one of the Painwalkers came to check on his lord and master.

Whimpering, she tried to curl up and away from the agony the unknown man brought with him. But the restraints at wrist and ankle in combination with the bulk of the furious Lord Marshal made movement an impossibility. All she managed to do was catch Riddick in the jaw. He roared again, swung, and blessed silence claimed her.

>>><<<

When she came to again, the room was lit, albeit dimly. She could make out the various instruments and displays around her. Wherever she was, IVs were apparently still in use, because had a large-gauge needle in her arm, attached to tubing that ran up and behind her. How had she not pulled it out with her thrashing?

The heart monitor blinked nearby. She stared at it, willing herself to breathe slower, to calm down. The Painwalkers still surrounded her, in a general sense. She found the man further away, a dim presence in the back of her mind, angry but calm at the same time. She hadn’t meant to upset him, but the drugs made her muzzy and her grip on reality slipped and slid from her grasp. She’d never thought she’d wish for the screams of the dead as company, instead of those who might as well be.

One of them approached, his mind wrapped up in things to be done, checking on her foremost on the list. He blinked to see her sitting up and looked at him when he stuck his head around the door. She endeavored to give him a smile, focusing on the mundane in his mind and not the keening of pain. Apparently her smile was not that good, or their faces were frozen in place when they received their marks. He merely blinked at her again and then entered the room. She watched him carefully as he made his rounds, checking displays and fidgeting with buttons. She spoke when he reached for the dial on the IV drip. “No more drugs please. Judgment is affected. Control is lost.” She tilted her head and tried to look helpless. “Water though? Her throat is dry.”

The man blinked again, but didn’t answer. Instead he toggled what must have been an intercom and spoke. “Lord Marshal, sir. The girl is awake again.”

The reply was full of static but clear enough to get the point across. She could go fuck herself.

River giggled at the look on the Painwalker’s face. Clearly, being stuck in a room for who knew how long with a girl who’d downed eight men in less time than it took to draw a full breath didn’t rank high on his list of good ideas. River wiggled her wrists in their restraints and eyed them speculatively. There was a pin dangling from the mass of hair over her shoulder. If she could get it into her mouth, she could get free. Catching the nervousness radiating off the Painwalker, she sighed and sat back. Maybe later. When not under observation.

“Sir,” she tried again. “The girl is thirsty. Do your people not permit even prisoners water in the desert?”

She nearly giggled when he jerked around to face her.

She didn’t get any water. It was probably all for the best. Water would have meant bedpans, catheters, or being uncuffed long enough to visit a head. Only one of those options appealed to her, but they probably would have re-shackled her hands and feet for the trip. Better to not put herself in that position. The IV turned out to be full of nutrients and fluids anyway, not sedatives.

How long had she slept? Her head hurt. The tranq bullet the bounty hunters used had long ago dissolved in her system, the wound closed over. Not being designed for killing, it had had little penetrating power. But it still counted as an injury. Her shoulder had bled sluggishly, pooling around her in the cryo box until the stench was noticeable even to the mercs who’d caught her. More fools they, using a box that required outside ventilation. They’d cleaned her up, and the box. Their mistake.

She’d woken up. Broken the tranq gun just as the nervous one shot her again. In the leg. That also proved to be mostly healed. How long _had_ she been out that the second bullet hole only showed traces of the clear casing? She could feel the drugs impregnated in the casing as they burned through her system, clouding her mind and making her words go all sideways.

Time slipped and curled around her, wrapping her in confusion. She tried to doze in between visits from the Painwalker medic. People talked around her room. She ignored them, sinking as deep into meditation as she could, closing door after door in her mind as she dropped into her core and tried to rebuild herself from the inside out. She’d almost succeeded too, when she caught a stray thought from one of the bridge crew and panic slammed through her like a storm, catching all reason and taking it far, far away.

>>><<<

Riddick was taking reports from his crew when it happened. One second the men were telling him they’d finished disposing of the foreign vessel’s crew and when did they want to disengage and continue sir? The next, a high-pitched shriek rang through the halls, grating at his ears and snapping all his senses into focus. Riddick moved before he remembered that there was only one person on board who could shriek like that. And had it been his ears or his head that heard her? His skull definitely rang like someone had yelled directly into his brain.

Shoving speculation aside, he ran for the infirmary, turning the corner just in time to see the medic stagger out and collapse with a muffled cry. He snorted. Apparently they could still feel broken bones. Huffing out a growl, he waved the surrounding men to a stop and listened. There. The faint _slap slap_ _slap_ of bare feet. How did she get free?

No matter. She’d go for familiar ground. The only place she’d find that was the other ship. He took off, using every shortcut he could think of. She must have found the same route, based on the trail of bodies in her wake. Most lay gasping, a couple nursed broken noses, and the last two guards gurgled out their last breath around mouthfuls of blood. If he hadn’t been so fucking pissed he would have stopped to admire the girl’s work. Batshit she may be, but she was also absolutely lethal in a way not even Kyra’d managed. Kyra had to work for her kills. This girl seemed to breathe death. 

It was beautiful. 

He rounded the last corner in time to see her slam a helmet on her space suit and leap for a ladder. He lunged for her and caught the rungs instead as she jumped again and slammed her small fist into a button set in the ceiling. A warning hiss and a hatch popped open. She eeled her way up and into the cavity it revealed, calling through her suit’s mike, “About to lose pressure. Hold on. Oxygen levels will drop.” 

Riddick had a moment to wrap himself around the ladder before she opened what was apparently an external hatch. Air rushed past him, dragging at his clothes. A wrench flew past his head and he ducked. Snarling, he heaved himself up and caught the internal hatch, shoving it closed by main strength just as a pack of Necros burst into the hold. Growling more to himself than to them, he ignored the weapons they trained on the hatch and headed for the locker the girl had left open. There was another suit in there, and it didn’t look all that hard to put on. One man moved forward, holstering his gun as he did so “Sir, are you sure?” He trailed off at the look Riddick threw him. Even through the goggles, his men knew that look. 

It took less than two minutes to get suited up and through the hatches. He shut the internal one carefully, but let the external one stay open. Crazy girl was probably the only one with any idea how to get back in, and he was _not_ crawling back to the Destroyer to beg them to open the doors for him. 

A giggle echoed through the speaker in his helmet and he growled, turning. He didn’t see the girl floating anywhere in space, so she hadn’t made a suicide jump. A quick scan of the visible portions of his own ship didn’t show anything either. That fucking giggle again.

“Down here,” she said. “Follow the line.” 

Something moved against his leg and he looked down to see a length of spacer’s line clipped to a ring set into the outside of the hatch. Slowly, carefully, he followed it around to the belly of the ship, past the engines and towards the place where the hulls of their respective ships met. She clung to the underside of the airlocks, examining a nest of tubes and wires that did _not_ look like it belonged to either ship.

The girl turned her head to look at him and then gestured at the mess. “They sit in their webs, all spun tight, and wait wait wait for the fly to land. Looks safe, it says. Looks sad, with bait cut up and left in the trap.” She tilted her head back at the mess and leaned over, pushing at the wires until she found what she was looking for. Waving him over, she pointed. Warily, keeping a good arm’s length from her, Riddick moved over and leaned in. It looked safe enough. A little black box, with what was probably a red light blinking on it.

"Green.” Riddick jerked his head up to look at the girl, but she wasn’t paying any attention to him. She was poking at the wires again, very gently. “Spider feels the web tremble. Comes to check on what it caught.” She looked at him again. “But if the fly is so foolish as to try to pull away, it will die anyway. Their hatred for those sane and living knows no bounds. They kill and eat the living. Are just as satisfied with making you dead or crippled.”

The fear in her voice sent something cold crawling its way down his back. For a moment he was back on a desert planet, running through a monster’s graveyard. He blinked and it was gone. She was still looking at him, her face just a bit too serene for his liking.

“Who?” he asked.

She shuddered, pulled her hand away from the little box, then backed her way along the hull. “Grief, rage, hunger, hate. They come when you call.” Riddick could see the shiver running through her body. “She sleeps, but she hears. Sleeps, but she hears. Voices inside, scrabbling like ants. Boarded. Ate the crew. Raped the crew. Set the bait, set the trap.” She gave one last shudder and stilled, the reflected light of stars on her faceplate the only thing to tell him where she was.

“Reavers,” she said, just as he was about to crawl over and shake her, or worse. “Pax is not peace. Pax is death for many and grief for the rest. They float, they raid. They hunt.” She paused. Riddick had a moment to curse the fact they were in suits. Her scent would tell him more; because while her body language said ‘fear’, her voice was strong.

“If she’d been awake and mobile, there would be no more. No more Reavers, no more hunters. Would have let them take the hunters and then taken them. Gone home to Mother and her crew.” She crawled forward till he could make out those huge brown eyes, hard and angry. “She _will_ go back. You cannot stop her.”

He chuckled and sat back on his heels. He had no intention of letting this one get away. She was the most fun he’d had since he’d fucked with Johns’ mind back on that hellhole of a planet. The last of his plan dropped into place with an almost audible click. This was just what he’d been looking for. A way to ditch the Necros and get the hell out of the known universe.

“Need to disable the tracker first,” she muttered, reaching over to poke around in the nest of cables. “Can’t disengage without catastrophic damage to both ships. Can’t leave until engines are repaired.” She looked up at him and grinned, the joy in her face all out of keeping with the conversation. “She will take him with her if he likes, but he must not chain her again.”

Growling, Riddick lunged and slapped his palm against her shoulder. She bounced once when she hit the hull, but her boots caught the metal again and stuck. “What makes you think I’m taking you anywhere?” he demanded. “What makes you think _I’m_ looking to go anywhere? Got my own ship.”

“Engines leave trail. Very traceable. Why be this far out else?” She shrugged, supremely unconcerned. “Why inspect a drifting ship who knows how far from occupied planets if you didn’t have a use for it?” She leaned up, her faceplate touching his. “You are different from them. Not a Painwalker. Rule through blood and fear, anger and…” she tilted her head. “Amusement?”

Riddick snarled and reached for the tube from her oxygen tank to the helmet. “What makes you think you know all that?”

"Apologies. Tranquilizers still in system. Cryo drugs don’t mix. Don’t like it when they make her die. Disjointed thoughts and running mouth.” She paused. “Appalling grammar is a side effect.” When he didn’t yank the tube, she continued. “You do not bear the scars of the Painwalkers.” Riddick flinched when her arms came up around him, gloved hands touching either side of his neck. “And you roar at them. But they take it. Bend the neck and knee. So how else would you rule?”

Growling, Riddick backed away, as much to let her up as it was to keep her hands away from him. The crazy bitch was all sorts of creepy. It’d be just his luck if she had a weapon hidden somewhere on her suit. Hell, all she had to do was get hold of _his_ oxygen tube.

She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him with solemn eyes. “Men will come to check on leader soon. She will apologize for screaming and running. Did not want ships to disengage and end up in itty bitty pieces.”

With that, she turned over and started inching her way back along the hull. After one last look at the mess of trouble attached to the ships, Riddick growled and followed. Fucking women. How did he keep getting stuck with the crazies?

The girl’s giggle over the comm system did nothing to help his attitude.


	3. Act One Chapter 3

_Frail, the skin is dry and pale, the pain will never fail  
And so we go back to the remedy  
Clip the wings that get you high, just leave them where they lie  
And tell yourself, "You'll be the death of me"_

“Remedy”, Seether

He told the Necros to get an empty set of quarters ready and the locks reworked so they’d only open from the outside. When the men protested he crossed his arms and let them guess where his eyes were looking behind the goggles. “You keep what you kill right?”

That shut them up. Whatever they were, Necros held to their beliefs. Hypocrisy about their creed didn’t enter the equation. Sometimes he wished it did. Then he wouldn’t be stuck in this situation in the first place.

Now he leaned against the doorframe as two of his men marched her in and unshackled her hands. The bruises on her face were fading, and the wound in her leg had closed up without any help from the medics. There was another on her shoulder, just a scar now, and he wondered how she’d gotten them. The girl turned her head over her shoulder to look at him as the last of the chains came free and one of the men left.

For a moment he toyed with the idea of waiting her out, she had none of the citrus of fear in her scent. Intimidating her hadn’t worked so far, and she had a bad habit of turning his mind fuck routine back on himself. It was disturbing how she could make him fly into a rage at the drop of a hat.

The girl giggled and spun in place, the dress she’d been wearing since she came out of the cryo box flaring to reveal a pair of black shorts before she came to a stop, one foot extended behind her parallel to the floor, the opposite hand reaching for the grating. She looked up at him, winked, and stood straight again before moving to the edge of the bed.

Riddick blinked when she leaned over the mattress. Was she sniffing it? Her nose wrinkled, but she sat anyways, hands folded in her lap and feet together on the floor. “Apologies,” she said, still grinning. “Except for screaming, running, and fighting, she has not been able to move free in a very long time.” She looked at the remaining Necro in the room, who’d been fingering his gun. “Chains and cryo and being dead without dying you see.”

Riddick shrugged and moved into the room, past the other man. “Well now you can move. Stay in these quarters, no more running and killing. Don’t stay and I’ll rethink the deal I’m plan’n. Got that?”

The girl, River, stood and moved around the room, poking at this and that, sticking her nose in the tiny head before meeting his gaze through the goggles. “This is acceptable. Presence of the Painwalkers close enough to Reavers she thought she must fight.” She bowed to the Necro behind Riddick, who shifted and looked to his Lord for guidance. Riddick lifted a shoulder, wanting to see how this played out. “Thought she was going to be raped and eaten and killed otherwise,” the girl finished. “Maybe in that order.”

Another uncomfortable shift from the man in armor. Riddick nearly laughed. She was better at putting the Necros off balance. All without a shiv or the body mass to back it up. This could almost be fun. She grinned at him again and continued with her inspection of the room. After a moment to make sure she wasn’t going to do anything else crazy, Riddick told the Necro he could leave and went back to his leaning, this time against the wall. 

The girl made a full circuit of the room before coming to stand in front of him, arms at her sides and head tilted. Her face was scrunched up in a way he’d almost call cute if the word itself weren’t so fucking undignified. She giggled again and tilted her head the other way. “Riddick doesn’t do undignified, does he? B for Badass. B for big scary man.”

Riddick stiffened and found a shiv in his hand. “Been meaning to ask you that. Who’s been telling you things?”

She shrugged. “You have. It’s in the face. The body language.” She wrinkled her nose at him, and he was momentarily distracted. When was the last time anybody had done _that_ to him?

“The girl,” she said, breaking him out of his thoughts again, “is _zhen de shi taincai_ you know. It’s why they wanted her.”

There was that language again. Riddick breathed deep and turned the comforting weight of his shiv in his hands as he rooted his feet to the floor and fought the urge to beat this girl into the ground. She still smelled of old blood, just faintly of antiseptics, and an odd mix of rain and charcoal. The sour fruit was almost gone, and he figured it must be because she was up and moving around instead of being in cryo. Once he had a firmer grip on his temper, he tried again. “A what?”

“A genius. It’s why the wanted her. Box her up and take her back. Get paid.”

That was familiar enough. “Mercs then.”

She shrugged. “Bounty hunters. Semantics. Talking. Planning. Could hear them, even when they thought she was frozen.” And then her scent changed, citrus and charcoal ramming themselves up his nose. He jerked back, startled at the suddenness of it, as she folded herself up on the edge of the bed, hands wrapped around her feet. “Don't talk to the girl! They'll kill you for it. Bleeding from every pore. Nail beds loose in their seats and the white horses on their red hills slipping and sliding off with the flood of it! Keep her tranqed. Keep her quiet. Keep her on ice. Turn her over. Retire and _don’t die_. Can't spend coin if you're dead.”  
Riddick had the feeling that if he ever had this girl nailed down on where her mind was at and when it was about to go off the deep end, he’d find himself joining her on these little jaunts into riddlespeak. And they called _him_ crazy. At least he’d just killed people, toyed with their heads a bit. Ok, he’d enjoyed mind fucking them, watching them try to sort themselves out before the inevitable hit. Still did, but the Necros didn’t want to play.

“Want her back, finish the work. She escaped, _ge ge_ got her out.” Those dark eyes stared at him. “Got out before they could finish. A weapon without targeting. Safety is problematic. Stopgap at best. Want her back under their control.” Fine boned hands moved from her feet to her knees, wrapping around them as she buried her face in her skirt.

Something uncurled in Riddick’s gut at the sight, and he shoved it back into its hole, kicking the lid shut as hard as he could. Women and sympathy had gotten him into this mess; he was _not_ going get attached to another. Grunting to himself in confirmation, he leaned back against the wall and prepared to watch the girl fall apart and turn hysterical. Give him a reason to yell. Anything. Instead, her breathing evened out, her heart rate slowed, and her scent changed. The charcoal faded a bit, the lemons and oranges even more so and in their place came the rain and apples. Did this girl have a base scent at all? 

Her voice was calmer when she spoke again, although still ragged around the edges. And so quiet he found himself leaning forward to hear. “She gave away the secret. It burned up her brain the way the last of the drugs are doing now. Fragments here and there. She told the whole ‘Verse. Dangerous. Can’t leave her loose. What else does she know?”

Finally, a way to get off the crazy talk. “Speakin’ a knowing things,” the Lord Marshal rumbled, trying to make his voice encouraging. Whatever it came out as, he doubted he’d succeeded, because she lifted her head and gifted him with such a _look_ that he had to swallow down a laugh. This was more like it, getting under her skin instead of her under his. And the best part was that she didn’t seem to understand the thin ice she walked. 

“Do you?” she muttered, before straightening and placing her feet back on the floor. The prim little rich girl was back; every line, every bone speaking of having been born to exactly the sort of life he hated. “Born different,” her voice was stern, correcting. “Born with clarity. The ability to see, analyze. Faster than almost anyone. Academy took her, made her a Reader. Enhanced the clarity till she heard. Saw. All. Inside the head, the heart. The intent.”

He was across the room before he knew he moved, the girl shoved back on the bed and a shiv tracing a line across her throat to match the one he’d given her in the infirmary. The scent of blood bloomed, but nothing else about her changed. She looked up at his goggles, eyes steady. Sad even. As if she really could see in his head, pick through the memories.

Unbidden, the chamber of the Quasi-Dead flashed through. He threw up a different mental image, one of mindless death and slaughter. Anything to keep from remembering how those freaks had ripped through his skull and condemned him for being something he hadn’t even known existed. “Get out!” He roared when she wouldn’t cower. “Get the _fuck_ out of my head!”

Her eyes glassed over, the smell of charcoal sifting through the rain and apples like some sort of fog. Snarling, he pressed her deeper into the bed. He ignored the Necro guard in the doorway behind him, weapon aimed in their general direction, trying to decide which of the two lunatics was more of a threat. The shiv in his hand bit just a little deeper, the line of blood welled and ran down her neck.

And then there was a knee in his balls and a set of claws raking down his face as sharp steel bit into his throat. Stunned, trying to guard himself while _not_ cutting his neck open on the blade she’d stolen from him, Riddick shouted and stumbled backwards. Even as he caught his balance and started forward for another strike, the tiny little bitch slithered off the bed and into a fighting crouch across from him.

“You get out of _my_ head, you _qingwa cào de liúmáng_!” She growled. He had no idea where she’d gotten the second blade. It wasn’t one of his, but he was too focused on not getting his mind read to really worry about it.

“What the fuck you talking about, me get outta your head?” he barked. The Necro backed out, wisely deciding that his Lord Marshal could handle the crazy girl Riddick followed him with his ears, but the girl’s eyes flickered just slightly as the door slid shut. Seeing his chance, the big man lunged. And missed. As if she’d never taken her attention off him, she slid under the strike and a little closer to the door. Growling, Riddick moved to block her escape.

“She can’t get out. You broadcast. Loudly. Clear, ordered thoughts but still _loud_. Your Painwalkers scream in their heads about what they used to be. They cut open her brain and took her no fear.”

That brought him up short. The strange thing in his stomach uncurled again, rapping experimentally at the lid to its hole. A bit of the blinding rage fell away and he straightened. “They what?”

The girl stood upright, and crossed her arms, scowling. It would have looked childish if it weren’t for the blades she still held. “Her amygdalae. They have been taken from her.” She paused a moment and tilted her head at him, as if waiting for something. Riddick was too busy tamping the animal back in its cage to figure out what the movement meant. “She hears it all. _Feels_ it all. Stays out of heads as much as possible, is better at blocking than she was. But they broadcast. Loudly.” In another sudden change of mood, she wrinkled her nose and grinned. The apples and rain were back, along with something flowery. “Like when the Riddick asked for names.”

And just like that, he was spitting mad again. In some distant part of his mind he wondered if the girl was playing with him, the way he sometimes played with his victims. But the rage was boiling over. He didn’t have time for self-analysis. Getting past her guard was more important. 

The little bitch giggled as she dodged, and he felt the kiss of metal along the outside of his arm as she spun past him. “Wanted to scare her,” she sang as she passed in a billow of apples, rain, and…silk? “Was waiting for it.”

Snarling, unthinking, he followed her through the turn and got her in the shoulder with his fist. The blow reversed her rotation. She moved with it, turning the motion into a high butterfly kick that caught him in the back of the neck. He fell, caught himself on his elbows and pulled his feet under him, ready to lunge for her. But she wasn’t in front of him. She’d used his neck as a step and bounced up and over, landing behind him.

Whipping around, he stopped short. She stood still as a statue. His forehead smacked into her upraised hand and she grinned again. It was so totally at odds with the situation, with the blood still trickling sluggishly from the cut on her neck, with the deep-seated rage still boiling up in him. Somewhere his animal was panting out a laugh at this little girl hitting him like a dog to be disciplined. He tamped it back in its hole for the time being. “Couldn’t know,” she whispered like a child sharing a secret. “Couldn’t know that she’d had heard of worse.”

Thought followed only slightly behind action as he leaned his head into her palm and glared through the goggles. “You got the convict. Murderer too. See the rest.” And he opened his mind, uncaged the animal, and somehow, threw it all at her.

The girl swayed on her feet under the onslaught, eyes unfocused. But she didn’t go down, the lemons and oranges didn’t come back, and the charcoal wasn’t even a hint on the air. Apples, rain, and something like wet earth filled the room. He had the strangest feeling that he wasn’t on a ship in the middle of nowhere. If he looked, he could see the fields of grass, wet with moisture, and feel the damp soil beneath his feet. It was like no planet he’d ever set foot on.

And then the feeling was gone. The smells were still there, but they affected only his nose, not his other senses. The girl’s eyes met his, and she rubbed her thumb along the strap of his goggles. The wet earth smell rose to dominance as she pulled her hand back, and he stepped firmly on the instinct to lean forward and keep contact.

“Worst thing you think you did,” she murmured. “Is laying in the cargo hold.”

He froze. His animal roared. They stared at each other, her heart steady and her eyes sad. His heart raced, and the blood rushed in his veins. He tightened his fists, shiv in one hand forgotten, as he tried to pull the burning in his chest back. He could feel the handprint there, throbbing. The last thing he needed to do was pass out in front of this little cunt.

Finally, he unclenched his jaw and grated, “Fuck. You.”

The girl sighed and stepped backwards until she found the wall, then slid down it in a tangle of arms and legs that somehow sorted themselves into the lotus position. “Apologies. Need to meditate. Been too long. Lucidity is slipping. Need to refocus.”

Riddick didn’t move. 

She opened one eye, then closed it again. “Either kill the girl, leave, or control your breathing, please and thank you. It will be boring if you stay. And scenting won’t yield proper information without a frame of reference.”

A breath. Another. A growl clawed its way up through his throat and past sneering lips. She didn’t open her eyes again. Finally, still rumbling, Riddick turned. Stopping at the door, he said “You don’t leave this room without a guard, we clear?”

“Illusion of control is important. She understands.”

Stalking past the wary Necro outside, Riddick tried to dodge away from the thought that this time, he may have met his match.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Of the first few chapters in this story, this one needed the least work. I’m pretty happy with it as it was. Yay!  
> Also, they aren’t mine! /cry. Whedon and Tuohy and the Wheat brothers and Vin Diesel have all made boatloads more money of these characters and their respective universes than I ever will (and I’m not gonna end up making any). 
> 
> qingwa cào de liúmáng- Frog-humping sonofabitch  
> zhen de shi taincai-An absolute genius  
> ge ge-brother


	4. Act One Chapter 4

Ah, but don't, no don't sink the boat

That you built, you built to keep afloat

Ah no, don't, no don't sink the boat

That you built

 _“_ Float”, Flogging Molly

He was in the small cargo hold, going over the assessment of the foreign ship when a quiet knock broke his concentration. Looking up, he saw a Necro in full armor, posture reading all sorts of confusion and apprehension. They didn’t like coming in here. Couldn’t understand why he didn’t dump her somewhere and move on. Sometimes he didn’t know himself. He nearly had once, before a woman who’d finally found her courage browbeat him into going back. Stupid women, always dying for him. Because of him.

“This one has no intention of dying anytime soon,” said a now familiar voice from behind the Necromonger.

Riddick swallowed a growl. Much as he’d love to take it out of the man’s hide, he understood. The little witch had a way of turning logic on its side and getting people to do things they’d never’ve considered. Such as keep her alive when he should have killed her and taken the other ship. Or keeping her in cryo until he was far enough into his escape that she’d have no choice but to go along with his plans.

She giggled as she stepped out from behind the guard, pale skin luminous to his sight, hair a dark drifting cloud. His goggles were on; the lights in the bay kept just bright enough that the Necros wouldn’t trip over anything. Still a bit too light to deal with if he didn’t have to. She didn’t seem to notice, boots dangling from one hand as she glided on bare cat feet over to the cryo box that held Kyra’s body. Setting the boots down, she knelt, tattered skirt drifting around her, and placed one hand on the edge.

Riddick fought the growl building in his chest and forced his hands to stay put around the data tablet instead of reaching for his shivs. Her face was calm, reverent almost. The sanest he’d seen her yet.

The curiosity in him just _itched_ to see what she’d do next.

Whether in answer to his thought or of her own choice, the girl stood and turned to face him in one fluid movement. “The girl needs clothes if possible. Doesn’t know how long…” and she fluttered a hand over her body, indicating the torn and bloody dress she’d been wearing for at least the past two days. “Female merc was only slightly bigger. Need to go over to the _Hound_ and search for more.” Her eyes glinted. Riddick got the feeling that wasn’t all she’d be looking for. She winked. He nearly jerked in place, settling for scowling instead and thinking hard on how nice it would be to have his thoughts to himself. She gave him that look again, the one that made the man want to strangle her and his animal laugh.

“Fine,” he stood and crossed his arms to add weight to his scowl. “You can salvage.” She didn’t bat an eye. A barked command and the snap of his fingers and the Necro guard bowed himself out, looking all kinds of pleased about not having to deal with the crazy girl.

She didn’t comment on the fact he’d obviously decided to be her escort, but she did huff and cross her arms as he turned to go. “She has a name.”

“Too fucking long,” he replied without turning. “And you never use it anyway. Now, you want clothes or not?”

She grumbled a bit to herself and ran to keep up. “She does.”

He laughed.

The girl, River, didn’t head right to the bunks when they crossed into the _Hound_. Instead, she wandered around the ship, sticking her nose in here and there. Riddick considered making her just grab the clothes and leave, but she seemed to know what she was doing, and he needed a better assessment of his escape vessel. What his Necros gave him was geared more towards their view of capture and kill opportunities cutting it free of the trap and flying it. Frankly, he thought they just like to blow shit up, but he was biased.

She ignored the hold completely after the first cursory look, giving the cryo box still sitting in front of the infirmary a look and a sniff as she passed it. She poked through everything else though; opening cupboards in the galley, checking gauges on walls.

When she finally got around to the bunks, she didn’t enter the woman’s first. From the lingering smell of cologne, a man had lived here. From the large jingling pouch she pulled from a loose panel in the wall, he’d lay odds on it being the captain.

“Thought you needed clothes,” he muttered, although the idea of hard currency was nice. If he only knew the denominations and value.

“Assessing resources,” the girl muttered, yanking a fold-out bed from the wall and popping another panel there. Another bag of coin joined the first. “How long will supplies last? How to pay for fuel and bribes and docking fees once civilization is reached?” She pointed at the bags, “Just got paid. Riding high off of the last job. Several thousand plat in the bags. Mercs don’t work for Alliance creds. Money what lives in banks can be taken back.”

A little more jiggling, this time in the tiny dresser, yielded a third bag, this one much thinner and not as jangly. The girl dumped the bags out on the bed and started sorting coinage. Riddick leaned closer, trying to make out numbers and markings. She looked over at him and grinned. “Was good payday. But taking _River_ would have left them set for a very long time, even split ten ways.”

“’Sat so?” he asked, poking at one a bag as she refilled it.

She snatched it away. “Two million plat. 1.75 in credits, but as _I_ said, mercs don’t like currency they cannot hold.” Apparently satisfied with how she’d divvied up the money, she stuck the bags back where she’d found them and waltzed out the door. Literally.

Riddick caught up with her in the next bunk, which was the woman’s, and leaned against the doorframe. “Two million. What’d you do?”

She stopped, motionless, and he caught the fainted tinge of lemons before cool water washed it away. Her movements, fluttery as they’d been, turned purposeful as she yanked open drawers and sorted through clothes. “Was born,” she said quietly. “Was born a genius and went to a school that was not. _Ge ge_ spent two years getting her out.” She looked up and met his gaze through the goggles. “She has told you this already.”

He shrugged and tried a different tack. “Confident you’ll make it back though.”

She snorted and turned back to the pile of clothes on the floor. “Why haven’t you killed her yet?”

“Entertainment.”

“Lie,” she threw a pair of pants off to the side. “Need her. Need to know what she knows about merc vessel so he can escape.” A few more pieces of clothing flew and she looked up at him. “Need to change now.”

He shrugged and gave her half a grin.

“At least turn around. This is not a skinshow. And if it were, you would still need to pay. The girl does not accept Universal Dollars.”

Something in his stomach lurched at that, and a wild vision flashed unbidden across his mind. She flinched, just slightly, and one small hand inched for the knife she usually wore on her thigh. Grumbling to himself about women and decency and how soft he was getting, Riddick turned and stared out into the hall.

He could hear cloth rustling, sliding over her body, then dropping to the floor. A second or so of silence and then more small noises. Leather, he guessed, over something soft. A belt being fastened. Apples, rain and warm vanilla flooded his nose, and he kept himself occupied with trying to guess what the new smell meant. He was still running through the options when the girl brushed past him, bare feet making hardly any noise. She’d left the boots sitting next to the folded pile of her old clothes.

He caught her by the elbow before she was completely out of reach and turned her, taking in the new clothes with a raised eyebrow. A pair of dark drawstring pants, loose enough for easy movement but not baggy enough to cause trouble in a fight. A wrapped shirt of what felt like cotton, long sleeves with loops on the end that were hooked over her middle fingers. A leather vest over that, belted under the ribcage. She’d dug up a hair tie somewhere, and pulled the dark cloud into a loose ponytail behind one shoulder. “Where you goi’n?” He said finally, when she refused to cave and speak.

She frowned and tried to pull her arm free. He moved with it, refusing to let go. “Bridge,” she huffed finally. “Assessment incomplete. If you wish to know the state of the ship, you will let her go.”

“Got a name little girl.”

“So does she.” She scowled and tried to step out of his hold again. He let her, chuckling as he followed her into the tiny cubby someone had the nerve to call a bridge. She fit much better than he did, or even the Navigator.

“She will help you if she can. Is a pilot. A genius pilot.” The girl got herself situated in the chair and ran a hand over the controls. “You know what the first rule of flying is?” She said, her voice changing slightly, taking on an accent he couldn’t recognize. “Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds.

“Love keeps her in the air when she oughta' fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.” Riddick frowned and leaned over to get a better look at her face. Her eyes were closed and the smell wet earth rose in the air around her. She ignored him and continued in her usual voice. “You are an old warbeast, sly like a fox, full of many screams. But I will try to love you, at least till we get back to Mother.”

“Fancy words,” Riddick grunted as he crossed his arms.

“Captain Daddy’s words. First advice he gave on flying.” She giggled and started flipping toggles and hitting buttons. The console hummed to life, screens coming up and status buttons flashing. “Only thing keeps him in the sky. His take-offs and landings are exciting.”

The big man snorted, eyes tracking her hands as she worked. “And why should I trust you?”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and grinned. One of the screens beeped and she glanced at it before answering. “Can’t read Chinese. Half the bridge is written in it. And she can fix engines.”

Another button, a firm nod, and she turned the chair to face him fully. He didn’t say anything, just glowered and let his thoughts of skepticism float at the top of his mind.

She wrinkled her nose, but stayed silent. He had the oddest feeling that she was seeing those thoughts and digging at the ones beneath them. Ones about how tiny she was. The way her skin looked to his ungoggled eyes. He’d seen her kill, seen her go crazy, thought this might be her sane. He was still trying to figure her out, figure out why he hadn’t killed her. Not that he couldn’t once he finally hit a planet again.

“She has trusted him so far,” the girl said quietly. “You can scent her, she can hear your thoughts.”

He snarled.

She shrugged. “Hypocrite wanted her to hear mistrust in his head. Didn’t want her to hear thoughts of having to kill her if she proves too much a liability.” She looked at the console. “She wants to go _home._ He does not wish to lead the Painwalkers.

“This ship,” she patted the armrest of the chair, “can get you away, but without the girl it will be impossible. Even after escape.” She leveled a look at him from under her eyelashes. “And you could _try_ to kill her after. She considers dumping him on Persephone and leaving him to fend for himself. Big scary man would get picked up quicker than thought. Can only be one thing, way he looks.”

“Oh?” Riddick leaned over the back of the chair until his mouth was next to her ear. Apples and rain, partially hidden by the stale smell of the merc woman’s borrowed clothes, bloomed. The warm vanilla was there too, with just a trace of cool water. This girl smelled like so many things that shouldn’t have matched and yet fit, like pieces of a puzzle in a chaos of colors.

She turned her head, just slightly, and he caught a glint of dilated pupil before her hair hid it. Interesting. No fear smell to go with the tell, or much beyond a tiny hitch upwards in heart rate. He grinned to himself and brought his arms down around her, one on the armrest, the other draped over the back of the seat. She looked at him but said nothing. Still grinning, he moved just a little bit closer, feeling lips brush skin as he asked. “What am I?”

Her heart rate didn’t go up again, but she drew in a breath before answering. “They see a dangerous man. A big chùsheng xai-jiao de xiang huo. Must have done bad things. Lock him up before he can do any more.” She turned back to the console, taking the chair with her. Riddick let her, straightening slowly and savoring the smell left in his nose by her hair as it passed across his face. “Gotta tell me what those words mean sometime little girl.”

She snorted. “Is not. Adult. Only look tiny. And you are an animal fucking bastard.”

Riddick tipped his head back and laughed. She ignored him in favor of the screens in front of her. “Life support functional,” she said when he was done. “Emergency systems acceptable. Will have to inspect engine to determine extent of damage there…External containment…” she did something and the display changed again. “Ah…”

“Ah… what?” Riddick leaned over her again to look at the screen, but could only make out about half of what was on it.

“Reavers had bits of brain. Disabled external grav field. Engine probably fine, mostly,” She brought something up on a different screen and pointed. “Without, fire up engines and fry in the radiation.” She glanced up. “You don’t like not having the upper hand. Not knowing things. Hate the girl for knowing what you don’t.”

He shrugged, as much as he could in the small space. “Information is power, gets you out of places.” He met her eyes through the goggles. The emergency lights were still flashing. At this angle they made her face look drawn and tight. The scent coming off her though, had nothing in it of fear. “Don’t like trusting people.”

She turned back to the console and did something else with the displays. This he could sort of understand. It looked like a map of suns and their systems. “But she needs you too. Takes two to fly. One in engine room, one in cockpit. She will teach you if you let her. Fix grav boost.” A dial this time, and the image on the screen zoomed in on one of the suns “Trust her to get the ship back to civilization.”

Riddick grunted and scowled at her. “Don’t like civilization much.”

She giggled. He stared, wondering at her sudden change of mood. She giggled again, as if in answer to the thought, and he made a mental grab for the closest thing he could think of that didn’t have to do with her. All he could come up with was the remembrance of the vanilla in her scent, and that was no help at all. She giggled harder. He snarled. “Stay out of my head.”

“Can’t,” she doubled over, knees drawn up and arms wrapped around her stomach. “You are broadcasting.” Abruptly she stopped laughing and took three deep breaths, the silk he hadn’t noticed rising in the air fading slightly, but not going away entirely. “Breathe,” she said. “Think on your breath. It will help.”

“You or me?” he growled, and was pleased to see her shiver slightly.

She didn’t reply, just shook her head and went back to the screens. He waited, fingering the shiv on his belt and growling under his breath. Just as he lost patience and opened his mouth to demand an answer, she spoke again “Not so far at all. And too far.”

“What is?”

She pointed at the corner of the screen where a set of numbers blinked. “She has been away from Mother almost three months. Captive for five days, ten hours. Adrift after Reaver attack for two months, twelve days. Attached to the Painwalker ship for two days, three hours and…twenty-one minutes.” She shook her head and sat back. “Still in charted space. Unsettled though. Nearest inhabitable star system too far for practical inclusion in Alliance.”

She looked up at him now, eyes serious. “At current fuel levels, at hard burn, chances of reaching a planet or space station to resupply are approximately forty-six-point three percent. Is a week trip at hard burn. She didn’t float far, just long. But distance from occupied space is great enough that it makes no difference. Chances to make it while conserving fuel rise to approximately seventy percent. But supplies of food would run out. And there are still Reavers to factor into the equation.” She blinked up at him. “They come now. They come when you call.”

“The beacon attached to the ship,” he growled and stood, all set to head for EVA suits in the cargo bay. He put a hand on her shoulder, the better to get her moving so she could help him pull the trap on the hull apart.

She shrugged away from him and stood. “She was going to disable it,” she grumbled. “But a big _hundan_ followed her out the airlock, then had his men nearly strangle her when she went back for tools.” She glared at him. When he took her by the arm instead, planning to pull her out of there if he had to, a blade appeared in her hand. She set the tip of it to the underside of his sternum and sank her weight back on her heels. “Doesn’t matter now. Leave the tracker. Will need it in place.”

“What the fuck you talking about?” he nearly shouted. “Got a beacon on this ship. Calling who knows what in along with those _Reavers_ you’re so afraid of. Want it off!”

She shook her head frantically. “Need it on. Need the Reavers to come. Only calls them.” She twisted her arm in his grip and got inside his guard. The edge of the blade kissed his throat as the scent of cool water floated around them.

He reached for her other shoulder. She leaned back, taking the blade with her, and kicked him in the gut. The breath left him in an _oof_ of air. Yanking on her arm as he caught his breath, he dragged her forward. He had her then, a shiv at her back.

She huffed and glared up at him as she poked the knife up under his arm pit. A hand up and under her elbow and he wasn’t in any more danger of having a lung punctured or the artery sliced open.

The cool water faded a bit and steel, hard and polished, sliced at his nose. The girl shifted, as if to bring a knee to his groin. Or maybe try to stomp his instep. He stepped on her foot. He’d forgotten she’d left her shoes off. Her cry of pain distracted him enough for her to duck and twist out of his grip.

Glaring, she backed up till she hit the console on the opposite side of the cockpit. “Need Reavers to come. _Not_ afraid of them. Die like men.” She dodged for the door as he lunged for her. “Need fuel. Kill them, steal the fuel. Make it to a settled place.”

And then she was gone, running down the corridor towards the cargo hold. Riddick grumbled as he followed her, threatening skinning and stabbing and anything else he could think of inside his head and _pushing_ it in her direction. This little girl was going to drive him just as crazy as she was.

He found her in the engine room, half under the engine itself. For a moment he contemplated dragging her out, but the thought passed quickly. He still didn’t know the inner workings of this thing and keeping on what passed for her good side seemed like the best bet so far. So he leaned up against the bulkhead and said “Still, don’t much like civilization.”

Her voice was muffled, but the laugh was clear enough. “Loose term. Settlements on the Rim. Empty moons and fresh terraformed planets. Fuel stations though. And supplies.” A hand reached out and pointed at a toolbox sitting nearby, “Wrench please.”

Riddick snorted, but bent to grab the box and set it closer to her hand. She sighed, but fumbled around till she found what she was looking for. “Set course in direction of Red Sun System,” she continued as she hitched herself a bit to the side and put the wrench to work. “Blue Sun is closer, but not what we need.”

Apparently satisfied with whatever she’d fixed, the girl slid out from under the engine, dropped the wrench in the box, and scrambled towards the back of the room. “Blue is Dangerous. Under populated. Where they took her.” She looked over her shoulder at him and her eyes were huge. He couldn’t get a good read on her scent with the engine right next to him though.

“Killed six before they made her sleep. Broke their tranq gun when she woke. Woke again to screams and grief. Then only silence.” She started fiddling with a nest of wires sticking out of a broken panel. Riddick leaned around her to see what she was doing and caught a whiff of the vanilla again. Before he could comment, she’d shoved a fistful of wires at him, still attached to something inside the hull. “Hold please. And don’t yank.”

Bemused, the big man did as asked, occasionally accepting another wire into the bundle as she sorted through, trimming some, splicing others and ignoring the rest altogether. Her scent was all around him, apples and rain, vanilla; and he found himself content to just breathe it in. Something in him settled, and even his animal didn’t protest. Finally, the girl spoke again. “Will probably end up on Triumph. Or Harvest if we can. Possibly the skyplex. But not Blue Sun. No Haven there. Haven is haven only for the dead.”

“What?” Riddick was confused now. He’d thought the crazy riddlespeak got burned out of her system with the last of the cryo drugs and tranqs. So far she’d been disjointed, but clear enough. Was she only lucid part of the time? Or had the meditation worn off?

She giggled and looked at him over her shoulder, seeming oblivious to the fact that the action drug her hair, and therefore her scent, across his face. He snorted and backed off.

“She is better than she used to be,” the girl said. “Talked of cattle not knowing what they were, cut the man with the girl’s name so his shirt was red and not blue, rubbed soup in people’s hair.”

She sobered and turned back to the wires. “Miranda. From the Latin. To be admired, wondered at. They wanted her to be a shining star. A world of people made better. G-23 Paxilon Hydrochloride. In the air processors.” She gave the wire she was working on one last savage twist and nearly shoved it into his hand. Riddick growled, but took it.

“Miranda is horror and Pax doesn’t bring peace.” Her voice was full of rage and sorrow. The wet earth was back, drowning out the vanilla. Along with it came steel. “Ninety-nine point nine percent of population on that guo cao de world lay down and _died_ where they stood.” She shuddered and took a deep breath. Riddick wondered if she realized she was leaning back, into his chest.

Abruptly she straightened and went back to her wires. He tried not to feel the loss; he could see where her line of conversation was going as sure as if she’d drawn him a map.

After a moment she continued. “And estimated thirty thousand became Reavers. Aggression out of control. Driven by rage and grief. After the purge…” she shrugged. “Unable to ascertain the remaining number. Nobody stupid enough to go near Burnham Quadrant and check.” She reached back and slipped her hand around his, dark eyes wide as she met his goggled gaze. “Wires back now please and thank you.”

Blinking at the sudden change of topic, he obeyed, stepping back to lean against the bulkhead again, although he wasn’t sure if he was proving something to himself or her. “Stupid plan, trying to fix people.” Stupid? Hell. Insane. The idea of someone trying to _fix_ him was enough to spark rage. He was fine the way he was. Plenty had tried to fix him. He’d go mad and eat people too if they tried to dope him up with chemicals.

River stuffed the wires back into the wall and got the panel to shut over them before going back to the engine. He watched her for a moment as she crawled over it, poking at this and that. He enjoyed the sight. The line of her leg in the pants, the way the muscles shifted. Once you got past the fact that she had a habit of saying things that made no sense and apparently thought she was some sort of acrobat, a man could appreciate the body that housed the crazy.

A wrench came out of nowhere, and he barely managed to catch it before it impacted with his skull. “The _fuck_?” he roared. “The fuck was that for?”

She scowled at him, perched on top the engine and holding a blocky piece of metal in her hands. She hefted it once it as if to throw. “Broadcasting again. She is not an acrobat. Dancer. And not as crazy as she used to be. Also,” she hefted the part again. “She is not a toy. Will not be played with and left alone. Not an object.” She glared. “Academy treated her as a toy, for their own amusement. Wanted a wind-up soldier to kill the snakes in the grass. To cut off the head of the brown.” She slammed the part down on the engine and started finger tightening bolts over the pins that held it in place.

Riddick growled and stalked over, picking his way past the debris on the deck plates and getting angrier with every step. “Listen crazy girl,” he growled, leaning up so he could get in her face, free hand on her ankle. “You stay out of my head. Thoughts are my own.” He yanked. She wobbled, grabbed for leverage, and glared at him. “Wasn’t think’n you’re a toy. Like the view is all.”

She tugged on her ankle, but he had a good hold and refused to let go. Switching tactics, she tried to kick him in the face, but he was ready for that, and changed his grip, pushing the force back at her. She nearly tipped off the other side of the engine housing. Flailing, she grabbed for purchase. He nearly lost his goggles as her hand scrabbled over his head. The snarl that ripped from his lips was more animal than man. She stopped and stared, but not with fear. No citrus. No lemons.

And just as suddenly she was back to glaring. “Think to use her to get free of Painwalkers,” she spat. “Think to learn what you can of this system and kill her. Dump her in the Black where no one will see. Maybe have some fun before you do.” She made another, less forceful, attempt to free her leg. He moved with it this time and managed to half drag her from the engine.

She spat and hissed. “Long time ‘tween women. But she is not _his_. Not a _toy. Ni tama de tianxia suoyou de ren duo gaisi!_ Will no one let her be her own!? Be _River_?” And she let go of the bits of engine she’d been clinging to and took a backhanded swing at his jaw.

He dropped the wrench and caught her fist, snarling and wishing he could reach for a shiv. Girl was going to drive him mad. Stark raving mad. And all he could think at the moment, if he was really thinking at all, was how beautiful the steel and vanilla coming off of her smelled.

No woman; not Carolyn with her guilt or Kyra with her hero worship, had looked at him with such unflinching fury in her eyes. Fry had been trying to get him to rejoin the human race, do a good thing, to help assuage her demons inside. Kyra had been mad he’d left her, determined to _become_ him, and ready to kill anything in her path to prove it. But she’d never had the bone deep fire that this tiny girl did.

They hung there, the girl suspended between a hand on the engine, her other hand captured in his, and a leg pinned between his elbow and his side. He growled and she panted out her rage in little huffs of steel and vanilla. It was all he could do to keep himself ripping her all the way off the ending, swinging her around and slamming her up against the bulkhead. He’d never taken a woman against her will and he wasn’t about to start now.

Her eyes narrowed and he felt her tense, then relax, and it dawned on him that she’d been thinking he’d take her unwilling. Do to her body what had been done to her mind. He nearly dropped her in disgust.

Slowly, carefully, she pulled first her leg and then her hand free of his grip. He couldn’t read the emotion in her eyes as she lowered herself to the deck. Steel, vanilla, apples and rain floated through the air as she stared up at him, with something new cutting through them all. Mint.

Slowly, carefully, she rose to her tiptoes and reached for his head. Hand his animal cried out in protest when he would have stopped her. So, he let her run her hands over the goggles, took a breath full of the confusion of her scent as she hooked her thumbs under them, and braced himself for the pain as they came off.

She only moved them far enough to expose his eyes, then rested her hands to either side of his face like blinkers, shielding him from the worst of the emergency lights. They didn’t flash in here, but the steady glow was bad enough. They stood for a moment, just breathing, and his animal noted he could only hear one breath in the tiny space between them.

Finally she tilted her head to one side and smiled slightly. “After they are free, then the man-beast may _try_ to do away with her. But he must remember that like will be returned for like in equal measure.” She gave his head a slight shake. “And he will remember that she is not a toy, not a _jianhuo._ Or she will take the skin from his back and use it for his burial shroud. _Dong ma?_ _”_

Then she yanked the goggles down, slithered out from between his body and the engine, and scrambled through a pile of electronic detritus before he could take another breath. Before he could reach for her and demand what the _fuck_ she’d meant she shoved something in his hands. “Here,” she muttered. “Portable Cortex. Will help you learn. She cannot pilot and take care of the engine at the same time.”

And that, apparently, was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Yay! Another chapter. With…more arguing. And fighting. No, this will not end soon. I’m having far too much fun playing with other people’s toys. Which reminds me, THEY’RE NOT MINE! The Firefly universe and all of its occupants are © Whedon. Riddick and his home planets are © Twouhy (I never can get that spelled right) Vin Diesel, and the Wheat brothers. Boo on them. I still think this universe mash-up would be the greatest thing ever. 
> 
> Translations:  
> chùsheng xai-jiao de xiang huo- Animal-fucking bastard.  
> guo cao de- dog humping  
> Ni tama de tianxia suoyou de ren duo gaisi- Fuck everyone in the universe to death.  
> jienhua- cheap floozy  
> Dong ma- understand


	5. Act One Chapter 5

_My captors are convinced that I’m pinned_

_Down in dependence on the system that fostered_

_An institution of thieves_

_But I live to see_

_The shock on their faces when my cell is empty_

"Off the Grid", Project 86

She didn't bother to say anything when a large hand wrapped around her foot. What was the point? He hadn't surprised her and she hadn't surprised him. He knew she'd been sleeping in the air ducts. He'd found her up there the first night.

She snorted to herself as she hung there, suspended between ceiling and floor, and felt his amusement wash over her. "Decide to try the floor this time," he rumbled, and she found herself incredibly glad that he hadn't fully sorted out which scent meant what on her.

Her scent gave her away when she built the nest of blankets the previous night. She'd known it would. But the value of sleeping near a mind that didn't scream at its own memories outweighed the confrontation she'd courted by hauling her bedding into the airshaft. It was a risk to be sure. He hadn't been at all happy when she shoved the portable cortex into his hands earlier that day and started teaching him what was what in the engine room.

Used to having the upper hand most all his life, being relegated back to the level of schoolchild irked him even more than her threat to repay like with like. The threat of attempted murder, of a _challenge_ , had excited him as well. She took comfort of metal and machines that could only whisper of what had been, not in anticipation of a fight worth having.

But then night came and she her careful facade of sanity started cracking under the pressure. The cries of the Painwalkers, marginally bearable during the day and made slightly more so by proximity to the Riddick, only increased at night. And her mind, left defenseless by sleep, nearly shattered under the weight of them.

So, shaking and trembling with others' nightmares, she'd bundled up her blankets and tucked them all into the junction nearest the Lord Marshall's quarters. And they were. Not the Riddick's, because she caught his disdain for the opulence of the rooms in echoes of his mind. He preferred a pallet on the floor, just enough covering to keep from shivering awake but not enough to hinder him should he need to rise and fight for his life.

She even got a few hours’ sleep, wrapped in his dreams of a brief time living on a planet of sunlight and civilization and an even briefer time on a planet that would try to blister you with cold or boil the blood in your veins if caught on the surface. There was no panic in these dreams, no true fear. Only planning and execution of plans.

Till the fans in the vents stopped for the night and her scent drifted down into the room. His dreams stopped. She burrowed just a little deeper into her nest and tried to pretend sleep of her own. The ceiling grate jiggled free and a set of silver eyes appeared over the edge and turned in her direction. "Can smell you ya know," he'd rumbled

She wanted to bed him to go back to sleep. She also wanted to crawl over and lay her ear to his chest so she feel it when he spoke again. Declining her instincts, she attempted reason instead, in hopes her body would obey. "She knows," she muttered and stuck her head out of the blankets to look at him.

His eyes narrowed. She could feel him wonder why she'd never commented on them. Nobody was ever able to keep from saying _something_ , but she didn't plan to indulge him any time soon. Privately, she'd decided they were wondrous, like a pair of stars brought down from the night sky and set in his soul as standards against which the ‘Verse should measure itself.

Keep up but don’t step up, or else you’ll die. She'd plucked the phrase from his head. She loved it. Finally, she’d found someone who might be able to manage the first and avoid the second in relation to herself. It was lonely being a genius weapon-girl-river, and she had a feeling that having a man-animal nearby would help alleviate some of that. But not if he planned to toss her aside first chance he got.

They stared at each other for a moment, him scowling into the dark, her with her head tipped upside down and the hair blocking most of her vision. She was in a bad position to fight, wrapped up as she was, but all she really wanted was sleep. Finally, when it had become apparent that he wouldn't speak, she'd continued. "His mind is clear. Honest. Not screaming in pain. Much easier to sleep in his vicinity than in range of her guard." And she hid herself in the blankets and waited till he went away, which he did with a long-drawn breath of her scent and a delicious hair-on-end growl.

The next couple days passed much the same as the first had. He tried to get a rise, of any sort, out of her. She, in turn, alternated between losing patience and attempting to deflect the temper back at him. They danced around each other, the steps made more complicated as she tried to keep tabs on the Painwalkers’ growing suspicions while simultaneously fine tuning repairs she on an engine she couldn’t test.

Oh, how she wished for the Kaylee girl! Engines talked to her, and only whispered to the river. She would manage, but her knowledge was from the cortex and what she'd picked out of her sister-in-law's mind, not from a bone deep instinct for what would or wouldn’t work, even without specialized training.

Things came to a head when the navigator appeared in the door of the _Hound's_ engine room and inquired, ever so politely, as to when his Lord would like to disengage from this foreign ship and continue on their way. The only reason the navigator lived to walk always was because Riddick, warned by the steel and rage in her scent, had stepped between her and her intended victim.

The Painwalker’s mind fairly emanated deceit and betrayal. Betrayal of self, of his old beliefs, and of his current Lord most of all. He planned to hail the rest of the fleet soon. She could _not_ allow that. Bad enough to have _one_ ship full of _go se_ Painwalkers so close to her people. An entire fleet of them would make the Reavers look like puppies in a shop. Add the Pax to the process helped create them and the recipe was for far more than disaster.

She regained her equilibrium in the moment between being blocked and realizing he'd done it on purpose. Plans for murder thwarted, gifted the Navigator with her most psychotic grin instead. He flinched, as well he should, and the Riddick rumbled a laugh before a huge hand landed on her head and rumpled her hair. She snarled up at him for a second, before she saw the half-formed plan in his mind.

Still grinning brightly, she hefted her wrench, listened to the animal's silent laugh, and answered the Painwalker for him. "She has offered to guide him to Haven. Place to bury the dead. The cargo in the hold will find a new home and grief shall guard the dead."

At her declaration, both men focused their interest on her, along with the curiosity of the animal instincts standing next to her. She tried to look confident, tried let him know that she was serious about the promise.

But taking the Painwalkers didn’t work in the equations. Painwalkers in the vicinity of Reavers, no matter how she juggled the math, ended in only one thing. More pain, more death, and a rampaging threat across the systems. Luckily, the Riddick took up the thread of the conversation and eventually sent the navigator away. She refused to continue in his game of cat and mouse for the rest of the day, focusing as much of her mind as possible on fixing the engine and teaching Riddick. It irked him, and they'd nearly come to blows. But they didn’t have time to act like children. She could feel the rage approaching. 

It was here now.

She realized that she'd been hanging there for several moments, lost in thought and swaying in midair, about the same time he started to slide one hand up he leg to brace her and his thoughts turned to things done in bed that had nothing to do with sleep. She tried to kick him and only succeeded in turning herself into a human swing. Or a pendulum. Now there was a thought. Maybe he'd swing her around like a rope tied to a tree. Maybe he'd take her by the hips.

Vanilla in the air, relayed to her by his interest in it.

Focus River. Flow in the direction needed.

"Let go of her please. She is quite capable of landing on her own."

He rumbled a quiet laugh, only slightly irritated. "You were going to land on my head."

Better sound apologetic. Not as if she'd meant to do so. Not as if she'd planned to. "Apologies. Only grate she could get open." He hadn't let go, and his hands _were_ on her hips now. No help for it.

She let go of the ceiling and felt him catch her weight. Apples and rain, vanilla and spiced musk bloomed in his mind, along with his mental assignments for each. Too close. Too close. Too close to knowing what she felt by knowing what she thought. Or was it the other way around? She was sliding down, hard muscles all around her as he controlled the drop.

And then a hard something else she knew wasn't a muscle. Her mind froze. Ran backwards. Was it because of her? Did she really affect him like that? His mind had teased and hinted and outright blasted her with things he'd wanted to do to her given the chance, but she'd thought it was just because she was the first woman he'd had in reach in nineteen months and two days. The holy man's woman didn't count. 

Or was it just because he'd been asleep and most men woke up like that? It was something she knew well. She lived on a boat crewed by a group of the most testosterone infused men she could think of and had the randiest sister-in-law in existence and didn't that twist the river now? 

Disgusted, she rubbed at her head, trying to get the mental images of how her own brother woke out of her head and searching desperately for something to replace it. The knowledge that the Riddick slept shirtless invaded her brain, followed closely by that of vanilla and musk and...He couldn't identify that last one. She knew it though. Simon's cooking. She was giving off the odor of Simon's cooking as her disgust with herself. Shensheng de gaowan!

He laughed at her, mostly silent, but she could see his animal, gape mouthed and panting, teeth flashing white in the dark. Jaguars shouldn't laugh like dogs. And men shouldn't mock her for having hormones that reacted properly to their presence. She was actually a little proud of that. She'd worried at times that those hormones and reactions would be forever out of reach, thanks to the missing bits of brain. Never had she noticed man or boy before in this way. Maybe she wasn't Pinocchio turned flesh, doomed to stay a girl and not turn into a woman. Not ever.

A distant flash of rage jolted her out of her thoughts. She swayed as it rocked her mind. She knew she should be grateful that he was still holding her upright, even though her feet were on the floor now, but she didn't have time for this. Didn't have time for games or placating this man-animal.

Danger danger danger. Another onslaught of rage. Gasping, she fell backwards and down, trying to keep her flailing hands away from his face so as not to further annoy him. "They come," she rasped, and tripped over a blanket on the floor. She caught herself, but it gave him time and the excuse to catch her again.

"Who?" he rumbled.

A breath. Another. A reminder to herself that Reavers died like men, even on a ship the size of the one approaching. Another reminder, this one of the fact that a ship that big had to have enough fuel left over after the hard burn and hard treatment to get them back to _some_ sort of settlement, if only they could make it to the hydrogen banks at its rear. Could the brain rewire itself to make up for the lack of amygdalae?

He shook her then, gently, and she got control of her wobbling head long enough to peer up at him out of the curtain of hair. She could smell him, the leather of his harness and arm guards; steel of his blades, sweat, musk, and something uniquely _him_ with no name she could pin down. He was the Riddick, the only solid and mostly sane person in reach. She wrapped her mind around his and sank into the comfort it gave her, all unknowing to the owner. In its tree, the jaguar shifted over to make room for her, nostrils flaring as she brought the sudden scent of cool water with her. She took a breath, dug her metaphorical fingers into the fur at the base of its neck, and opened her eyes again to look up into starlight.

"Reavers," she rasped again. "Come. Soon. Before the watches change." She knew her eyes were glassy, but there wasn't time for a line between sanity and insanity right now. "The girl killed the navigator before he could hail the fleet. Bridge crew is dead. Has disabled gravity staffs and most of the guns in the armory." 

And hadn't that been tricky, leaving her blanket nest and the clothes she'd worn for two days and changing into the tattered dress she’d worn in the cryo box. All so he wouldn't notice her diminished scent in the air ducts. She’d plucked the knowledge of the weapons and their workings from various minds around her, and thanked Shepherd's faulty God that none of them were too complicated. There was just too much work to do.

He tilted his head slightly, and she felt him going over the bits of the plans she'd given him and filling in the gaps. "Bait?" Something in him recoiled at that, something about the blue-eyed devil and keeping the girl with a boy's name from becoming so much meat. She blocked it as best she could and tugged on his arm with her whole body, leaning back and away. He growled and held her tighter. Stupid man. His jaguar just huffed and lay its head on a set of massive paws.

"Yes bait. Cannot let Painwalkers roam free in this territory. Reavers will finish. Blow both ships when done. Obliterate. Only way." She leaned back again. This time he let her go, eyeing her up and down and just now noticing the scent of her old clothes lingering. She'd changed back to her borrowed merc gear and raided the _Hound’s_ weapon's locker for blades. She’d been looking for the sword especially, which she'd strapped to her back with a promise to _never_ let go of it again. She knew she'd have to break that promise soon, but it was the thought that counted. In her own head at least. Only words truly counted with others.

"Need to go. Get the girl who wished to be him," she continued and had the private satisfaction of seeing him rear back in surprise. "Was serious about offer of guide to Haven and help to bury her. Will be good home for her. Safest place the girl can think of. Guarded-"

"By grief, yeah." He growled and rubbed a hand over his head. "And how do you plan to get her to the _Hound_ without anyone noticing?"

How stupid could he be? Maybe he couldn't keep up with her after all. His nostrils flared at the smell of steel that coiled through the air around him and he glared down at her. She yanked her head up, pointing at the ceiling with her chin. He looked up at the gaping hole into the vents, then down at her and chuckled. "That will only work till you get to the airlock."

She shrugged. "Inconsequential. By that time, alarms will be going off on bridge. Crew will have other concerns. _Hound_ is ready to disengage. She disabled the trap, left it on Painwalker ship, took it off merc vessel. It has been a long night. Not much sleep has been had nor will be had." Now she grabbed his hand, huge in hers, long fingers ready to swallow her up like a kitten. But the kitten had sharp teeth and sharper claws and would bite even as she purred. Bad thoughts. Distracting thoughts. Steel and vanilla.

She pulled on his hand, trying to get him under the hole in the ceiling. "Must _hurry_ you big _hundan_." She growled, and knew she'd just cemented the kitten analogy in his head. No time to worry about that. "Need to have the _Hound_ disengaged and drifting before Reavers get in visual range. They must have a place to dock so that they do not blow us to bits. ETA is thirty minutes!" She yanked again and finally got him to move, although his understanding was laced with a good deal of amusement at letting himself get shoved around by a girl not even half his size. She wanted to kick him.

"An' how would you know that?" he growled in her ear as he pulled her close and boosted her back up into the vent. She scrambled up and in, moving further down so as to give him space. Once he was up, eyes gleaming in the dark, mind anticipating being able to see her while she couldn't see him, she lashed out with a foot. "She hears your mind you ben tianshengde yidui rou.

And if she chooses she hears with your ears, smells with your nose and sees with your eyes." The last few words came out in a snarl, just as much at herself as it was at him. Hopefully if she continued to insult and abuse him he wouldn't keep trying to take fistfuls of her heart and wrap them around his.

The jaguar was all too pleased with its ability to do that particular trick. It meant she couldn't leave the base of its tree and it could fall on her whenever he wanted. The man was all unknowing to be sure, but it didn't change the fact that she thought she was losing herself to him. At least he hadn't tried to change her yet, like everyone else who held her heart.

He grabbed her by the foot again, and she scrabbled at the sheet metal of the vent as he dragged her back and under him, starlit eyes glaring, and lips pulled back in a snarl. He still hated the idea of anyone, even a kitten like her, in his head. She couldn't blame him. She didn't choose to be there in the first place, except she needed an anchor on this ship of pain and subliminal screams. He was more disturbed about the lack of pain he felt from her sifting through his thoughts than he was over the idea of her seeing into head. Not for the first time she cursed the Quasi-Dead and the Painwalkers in general. How could a people so far away continue to make the river flow so wrong?

Steel, apples and rain; cool water fading. The jaguar stretched and rolled in his perch, tail twitching. The man kept snarling and she heard the _tick tick ticking_ of an old-fashioned clock somewhere in her head. Not enough time. Too much had passed. Sanity slipping as the rage and grief drew closer. Time to move before all was lost.

She'd missed her chance to get away from the shoulder shaking. He'd been talking to her too, while her mind had wandered. Helplessly she looked for the big cat, but it ignored her, staring at the Reaver beneath its tree instead. Wise cat. She couldn't threaten it at this point, but the Reaver kept screaming and waving a sword and trying to climb. Now why wouldn't the man see the threat as well?

"Are you even listening to me?" His voice vibrated in her bones, calling out to something in her, something that wasn't the girl, but wasn't the weapon either. The river flowed, mixed, and became a stream of blades that danced like the girl. The fog lifted, and although she could still hear the screams of the Reavers and the dreams of the Painwalkers, she found herself standing in a clearing, the body of a Reaver nearby and the jaguar nearby licking its claws. She had a moment to wonder if this was this sanity, Then the big cat looked up, stalked over, and swatted her tip over teakettle with a velvet paw.

Hands came down, clawing and scratching, and she realized that they were her hands. She was digging furrows into the arms and shoulders of one incredibly pissed off, incredibly worried man who by all rights could have and maybe should have snapped her like a twig. Chest heaving, she stared up at him as she fought for control, but they her hands still flailed. She couldn't seem to get her panicked body to catch up with her cognitive thought processes. She didn't get the chance either, as he laid himself over her, pinning her legs with his weight and dragging her arms up over her head. Apples, rain, and the overbearing mixed scent of steel and blood washed over and around her. He was still hard, everywhere, and she knew the vanilla would be too faint for her nose even as she fought the urge to _writhe_ under him. Why did her body and heart have to choose now of all the xiongmao niao times to decide to function like a normal girl's?

"Now," he growled. "You ready to act sane?"

Act sane. Because they both knew she was the furthest thing from. "Yes," she panted, trying to drag in air around the weight crushing her chest. "But she cannot breathe. Let her up please?"

He waited a moment, then raised himself over her again, but didn't let go of her hands. "You were the one in the hurry. Cost us time."

River was a little too busy catching her breath for a second to answer him, so she let her eyes do it for her. He smirked, as if he could Read and understand the stream of curses she was directing at him in her mind, then let go of her. The river was still a stream of dancing blades, the girl and the weapon temporarily merged with it. She wanted to _go_ , to get this over with before she slipped back into the waking dream again, so she moved while she could, twisting over onto her stomach and crawling forward. He let her get a few feet ahead before following. The jaguar wasn't amused. Entertained yes, looking forward to a good hunt yes, but not amused. Something had changed when it downed the Reaver. It had tasted the blood of the enemy and found it good. She only hoped that it would stop hunting her once it had found better prey.

>>><<<

Her breath steadied by the time they got to the cargo hold. She kept watch over the ship as Riddick fiddled with the buttons, dials, and latches on the cryo box holding the girl with the boy's name. The only minds awake were the ones that should be, and the fresh cries of the guard she'd slain to gain access to the weapons lockers had faded into the background of the ship already.

A hiss and the slight clunk of the box's lid opening recalled her attention to the present location, and she peered inside, head tilted as she resisted the urge to stroke the dark mass of hair arranged around the pale stubborn face. She could hear the whispers, much clearer than they had been the last time she'd been in this room; of desperation and need, determination and despair. Such a sad girl, believing herself unwanted, driving herself to become worthy. She knew that feeling.

And then the Riddick was there, one hand on the shoulder in the box, the other entangled in that hair. He looked down at the girl that lay there, face unreadable, thoughts full of regret and shame and anger. River wanted to reach into his mind and take them all away, to tell him not that it was all right, but that it was all right to feel helpless in the face of them. She did. She did all the time. If she hadn't come to terms with it at some point, she really would have merged with Serenity.

Not that she wasn’t still temped to try at times.

Slipping up next to the jaguar in his tree, she ran a hand down its back, even as she slipped up and laid a hand on the Riddick's shoulder. He turned to look at her, resignation foremost in his mind, He also questioned whether he had yet another woman tying herself to him. What crazy things would he do for her sake?

River wanted to stop. Stop right there and absorb the fact that he was thinking of doing things, _any_ things, that would save her, take care of her. All unasked. Were his innards made of soft caramel and the plascrete armor weak only to women or children? No time for that now.

"Distance is short," she whispered. "Probability of being caught in the halls between here and the airlock is two-point six seven percent if haste is made and movement is quiet. Will shave two minutes seventeen seconds off of time it would take to lift girl with a boy's name into vents and move her that way," She looked away from his gaze, unable to his expression as his thoughts roiled through her. Instead she fixed herself on the girl in the coffin. "Could make up for the girl going crazy earlier. More dignified."

Kyra'd never been worried much about dignity. River felt the tinge of amusement in the thought, and then the knowledge that he'd projected at her on purpose. She tilted her chin and looked at him out of the corner of her eye, wondering at how thought and action became one and at how he continuously surprised her. It was a refreshing feeling.

He wasn't looking at her though. He'd reached into the box and, ever so carefully, lifted his past into his arms. River had to shut her mind to him then, all except the barest thread. He was reliving every moment since he'd met Jack. The blood, yelling, fear, and pain, all of it. She needed to focus. Getting wrapped up in their story wouldn’t help.

As predicted, the halls were mostly clear. The sensors on the bridge were just beginning to pick up the incoming Reaver ship, but the place was only occupied by the dead and so there was no one to see the computers report the opening and closing of the doors. A few guards stood at their posts, one around a corner and stationed in front of the main weapons locker, another blocking the way to engineering.

It had grated at Riddick to be the one waiting, but it just wasn't practical to keep leaving Kyra on the floor when River could do just as good a job at getting rid of the obstacles. She'd let him know that with a solid glare and her scent at the first sticking point, even as she'd palmed a knife, twisted her hair up to stuff it down the back of her shirt, and ghosted around the corner.

Riddick the sweet spot that he favored. She liked a place further up, centered right on the spine. The height disparity was a bit of a problem, but she landed on the Necro’s back without tipping him over. One hand covered his mouth, the other drove the knife between vertebrae in the gap between helmet and the rest of his armor. Her weight pulled him backwards as he fell. She did her best to soften the sound of metal hitting metal even as his mental shrieking quieted and became the whimpering of the dead.

The next two were just as easy and just as quiet. The Riddick watched her with speculation and something close to admiration. But she didn’t have time to bask in the feeling of someone not _fearing_ her for what. Too soon, they came to the last corner and a spot of trouble. She looked from the two guards in front of the airlock between ships to the mountain standing next to her and swallowed a sigh. At least he'd get to play. With hands and eyes, she got him to set his burden down. As he straightened and asked her in his head what the fuck she was planning, she turned and skipped out into the open.

His shock and rage were things she'd treasure later, knowing she could pull the same stunts on him that he managed on her. In truth they were well matched.

And then the guards, equally stunned, leveled their weapons at her and asked very carefully what she was doing out of her room. She stopped, coming up on tiptoes, hands flying to her mouth as she tracked the Riddick with her mind. He'd caught on, and pulled his blades, mind sharp with anticipation. "Oh," she whispered in her most childish voice. "Is this not the way to the tea party? Madame Inerva will be _so_ disappointed!" 

The guards each took an instinctive step forward, not sure what to do about the girl their Lord had declared hands off, but not willing to take risks either. The step was all that she needed, bringing them just past the little half wall that guarded the airlock and right into the Riddick's reach. The scent of blood washed over him. The liquid itself poured over the guard’s breastplate even as Riddick lowered the body to the ground. River grinned up at him, still feeling the streams of blades in her veins as she pulled the knife from under her guard's jaw and wiped it on a bit of exposed cloth between armor plates.

The Riddick growled at her for pulling such a stunt. She couldn't tell what his eyes were doing, as he'd put the goggles back on when they came out of the vents, but she knew his jaguar pricked its ears with interest. She merely stuck out her tongue and palmed open the airlock, leaving him to gather the other girl and follow.

She needed space. Needed to get away from the song of the blood that called her to dance death upon any in reach. Too long. Too long without proper calm and meditation. Too soon after escaping cryo. She could feel the balance slipping again.

A Reaver screamed in her head.

Riddick plowed into her from behind, unprepared for her sudden stop. His irritation washed over her as he nudged her in the back with an elbow.

With exquisite care, she turned to stare up at him, cataloging the different kill points versus disabling wound possibilities in her head. The body in his arms was a weakness. Steal the steel along his legs and deprive him of those weapons. Hook a foot around his and bring the mountain down. Cool water gone, replaced by steel, charcoal, and something he couldn't identify. She could. Witch hazel. Sheer insanity, not the slightly crazy of charcoal.

"Hey," he growled, and just like that the trance was broken. "Get moving. No time for losing your mind."

A deep breath. Another. She sank both hands into the jaguar's fur and buried her face in its neck as it nuzzled her shoulder and _purred_ fit to shake her to pieces. Centered now, she inhaled one more time and turned back around, leaving the man confused and angry and wondering why his animal was so smug in her presence.

Proximity alarms started to go off on the bridge of the Destroyer as they finished placing Kyra in the empty cryo box. No time to hide it. No real need to. River grabbed a pair of cargo straps and handed them to the Riddick, feeling the need to hurry beat louder with every pump of her heart, driving the blades even deeper into her skin. Box tied down, she ran for the EVA suits, grabbing the two they'd been using and shoving them his way. He snarled and asked what the fuck they needed these for, but she only had time to give him a look before getting behind him and pushing. "Hurry hurry hurry," she chanted frantically, cursing his stubborn need to know what was going on at every moment. Didn't he have any faith in her? Qingwa cào de Liúmáng!

He finally moved. He barely cleared the hatch before she slapped the button to close it and the inner doors. Surprise and anger at her betrayal roiled out of him as he turned, but then she was diving through the closing doors. Poking him in the arm with one hand, she tried to take the suits from him with the other. "Quick, quick. Close this side. Disengage. Visual range soon. They must be fooled!"

He growled, but did as asked, for once not trying to bully her with his foolish posturing. She allowed herself a small sigh of relief as she heard the seal disengage, hoping that the spacer's lines she'd attached to the bulkheads of both ships wouldn't get damaged in the oncoming chaos. It was the last sane thought she had, as the triumphant shrieks of the Reavers ripped through her head.

Visual range.

She collapsed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Let’s get this over with. They’re not mine! Whaaah! I wish! But they’re not. Firefly/Serenity is Whedon’s. Riddick and his environs are © Twouhy (Sp?), the Wheat brothers, Vin Diesel, take your pike. But not me! Boo.  
> Thanks everyone who’s been reading! I really appreciate it!  
> Shensheng de gaowan!-Holy testicle Tuesday  
> hundan-bastard  
> ben tiansheng de yidui rou - Stupid inbred stack of meat  
> xiongmao niao -panda urine  
> Qingwa cào de Liúmáng- frog humping son of a bitch


	6. Act One Chapter 6

_Sights set on his eyes, mindful_

_Unholy beast, ignorant, prideful_

_With arrogance he gloats_

_I'll play the dark horse_

_Straight to the throat_

"SOTS", Project 86

Riddick figured he'd had just about enough of this psychotic little girl for the night. He knew she'd planned to land on his head. Pretty much everything else from the moment he'd grabbed her by the foot had gone to shit. Well, not her reaction as he helped her down. Even that was a special sort of fucked up. Not what he needed to keep his mind in the game, not then and not any time in the future. She was doing it to him, driving him right down into her own branch of crazy, and his animal was _not_ helping drag him out of it.

Of all the times to go soft, he seemed to pick the ones where lives were on the line.

Fuck it all anyway.

And then the witch collapsed mid-step. He had half a second to wonder if it was on purpose, and then he saw her face. Her eyes were glassed and her lips pulled back in a fixed snarl, her hands clenching and unclenching. It was a good thing she'd put her blades back, because he wasn't stopping to get them. Scooping her and the stupid suits up in a big unwieldy bundle, he ran.

He could hear the alarms drifting down the hallways from the bridge; soon the emergency procedures would kick in and the second shift of bridge crew would wake up and check on them. Then all hell really would break loose.

His mind raced, trying to see a way out. The Reavers made for an unknown variable, both in timing and in threat. The Necros would look for the girl in his arms, but he didn't want them knowing he wasn't on their side anymore. Not just yet. Every minute they weren't trying to lock him up and turn this ship around was another minute closer to true escape. He was in front of the girl's bunk when the first Necro rounded the corner from the bridge. "My Lord," the man shouted. "My Lord, the bridge crew, they're all-"

"Dead," Riddick cut him off, and drew himself to his full height as he hit the button for the door with his elbow. It hissed open and he stalked inside to dump the girl on the stripped-down bed. "I know. Someone," he turned to stab a finger into the man's chest, "Wandered off and went batshit. Where was the guard?" He had a feeling he knew. "Where was the guard for the bridge entrance?" he roared, and had the satisfaction of seeing the man curl in on himself, just a little.

On the bed, the girl whimpered and rolled herself into a ball. He snarled at her over his shoulder and caught steel in his nose, fresh sharpened blades almost literally ripping their way into his brain. Nearly drowning it was the unidentifiable smell she'd been giving off ever since she collapsed, and he fought the urge to sneeze. The Necro stammered something about bodies and guards, and Riddick rounded on him, shiv out and the blade on the man's neck. "I don't care," he growled. "Get back to the bridge and figure out what's going on."

The man never had the chance to obey. The ship lurched, throwing them both off balance and River nearly off the bed. Riddick felt the skin and cartilage of the man's throat part under his blade as gravity and the sudden movement did for him what he'd been considering anyway. Blood poured, and his animal perked up in interest. But there wasn't time for that. He could hear Necros shouting and running in the halls, Alarms shrieked all over the ship. And over everything was the ominous noise of metal buckling and ripping. The outer hull, he guessed. He reached for his ulaks.

A small hand, cooler than it should be, but not the deathly cold of the Necros, laid itself over his just as he grasped the handles of his blades. Cursing, Riddick turned to glare at the girl. Her eyes weren't glassy anymore. Something in her loosened as he watched. The steel in the air faded, replaced by enough cool water to drown in. The scent he was beginning to identify as insanity, for lack of any other identifier, was still there. Not as strong as the water though.

His mind spoke words he never wanted to pass his lips again.

She smiled up at him, serenity oozing out of every pore. "She is with you," she answered. He couldn't help the clench in his heart at that. Her eyes flickered and her mouth made a little moue of sadness. "He broadcasts again. She does not wish to make him uncomfortable." She looked past him; not at the door, but something else, something beyond. He waited, wondering what she knew. She grinned up at him with a smile full of death. "They are here. Your warriors fight. And fall."

He made another reach for his ulaks, and she laid another hand on his arm. "Not yet. Let them kill each other. Big ship. Very full. Fewer enemies to fight each other means fewer for to dodge."

It made sense when he stopped to think about it. That didn't mean he liked waiting for madmen to try and eat him. He pulled his ulaks, then dropped into a crouch and leaned against the wall. "You know you're fucking crazy, right?"

She giggled and dropped to her knees next to him. He eyed her skeptically, knowing she could probably come up fighting from that position just as easy as he could, but it was a risk she didn't need to take. She shook her head and pulled a blade from the back of her belt, running her hands over it as she breathed deep and steady. Meditation, he figured, and she nodded.

He sighed to himself and cursed mind readers in general before turning his attention to the sounds outside the room. The Necros would be looking for him in his quarters. It didn't sound like anybody had figured out his change in location, because all the running feet in the hall kept right on past the door. Screams, both human and feral, echoed through the halls.

Luckily, his patience ran out just about the time that the sounds of fighting started to fade. Still plenty of screaming. More of it even. He figured the Reavers must have found the non-combatant members of the crew. Just as he was about to stand, the girl laid a hand on his arm. Looking down at her, he realized he'd lost track of her heartbeat and scent in his concentration on what was going on outside. She'd moved to face him without his realizing it. Focused on her now, he could hear the steady _thump-thump_ of her heart. Smell the steady creep of insanity as it overwhelmed her other scents. His animal raised its hackles.

"Many dead on both sides," she murmured, eyes glassing for a moment. "Necro warriors gone. Crew left. Way to bridge is chokepoint." She looked back at him. He didn't pull away when she reached up to lift his goggles. It was dim enough that the light wouldn't hurt much.

"For his own safety, the jaguar must not get in her way. She teeters on the brink. The river and the girl and the weapon have joined. She does not know if she will be able to unmix them when this is over. She is likely to strike to kill at anything that moves. She apologizes in advance for any injuries she will inflict." She took a deep breath, shuddering and squeezing her eyes shut. "Patterns broken, familiarity lost. Has been too long without true meditation and calm. The _kuangzhe de_ comes, the moonbrain speaks, and the sister becomes the weapon."

She opened her eyes and raised herself on her knees to look at him face to face. Riddick waited, breathing in the growing insanity in the air, wondering if she'd snap right then or hold it together long enough to be useful. Maybe he should break her neck and save himself these injuries she promised.

She giggled, a high-pitched sound like someone grinding glass. His skin tightened. "One speed," she murmured, leaning close, breath ghosting over his face. "Do not stop. They will eat you where you stand. Or rape you. Bring you down, defile you. Big man. Lots of skin. New clothes for all. Do. Not. Stop. Moving." She ground the last words out from between clenched teeth.

"Stay away from airlock. Air leaks when seal forced between ships. Crow shouldn't mate with a tiger. Not compatible. Will need to come back for suits. Radiation in other ship." She inched closer, lips near his ear now. His blood sang in his veins with the need to grab her and do _something_. She giggled again, and he groaned and dropped his head, nearly touching it to her shoulder.

Cool hands on his jaw lifted his eyes to hers. "Do not force her when it's done. For your own safety. She has warned you." Still holding his jaw, she leaned back, face tilted towards the ceiling and eyes closed. "Feels the river merge. Insanity comes and becomes the kill. And the next. And the next. Till all breathing are not."

The screams in the halls were suddenly louder. She let go of him and stood, nearly giving himself a face full of her chest and then hips. She'd pulled the sword from its place on her back and headed for the door before he fully registered what she'd done. And then the door was open and there was a _thing_ in it. It might have been a man, but now it was beyond animal. He caught a glimpse of metal hooked into the skin around the mouth before it went down in a spray of blood.

The girl stepped over the body and cut at another enemy. Riddick yanked down his goggles as he stood to follow her.

Events after that were a blur of blood, blades, and howling savages. They fought their way to the bridge and through it. Then, standing in the midst of the bodies and already covered in gore, the girl thumbed the ship wide intercom and shrieked something in that strange language of hers.

They had half a minute to breathe. He roared at her for her insanity and tried to grab for her. She nearly took his reaching hands off with her sword. Then the hordes descended, and he lost himself in the next round of blood, pain, and shrieking battle.

She fought with him better than Kyra had; moving as she'd named herself, a river of blades. Turning, slicing, _dancing_ , she danced around him like grace unchained. Sometimes she under him, or even over, using his body as a piece of furniture the same way she treated the rest of the bridge.

He couldn't bring himself to mind, reveling in the glory of the battle, the blood, and the sheer joy of killing. His animal came to the fore, and it guided him through the fight in ways that the man, the intellect, would never have imagined. He'd fought with and with Kyra. They'd found a way to fight in harmony, for a little while. He and the river girl moved as _one_ as they cut a swathe like Death's harvest through the Reavers. Beautiful couldn't begin to describe it.

And then the screaming stopped. The last of the madmen gurgled out his lifeblood over their feet and the two were left, panting, in the emptiness of the bridge. Bruises, nicks and cuts covered their bodies. There was at least one spot on his shoulder where one of them had actually _chewed_. First thing he'd do once he was in the clear would be to find some disinfectant and fucking _bathe_ in it. He didn't want to think on some of the diseases these freaks must carry.

Across the bridge from him, past the ruined command chair and the sparking wreckage of the consoles, the girl stared at him. There wasn't a scrap of sanity left in her eyes. The smell of fresh blood and opened intestines saturated the room. Sure money said that if he were able to smell her at all, it'd be her insanity cutting its way up his nose, not cool water or any of her other scents.

He tensed when her grip on the sword tightened. Somewhere along the way she'd picked up another. It sat backwards in her hand, blade reversed along her arm. She brought it up, slowly, and stared at the blade as if noticing for the first time. Then, quicker than thought, she flung it at the last intact console, ending its screaming warnings and alarms in a burst of sparks and the screech of protesting metal. Riddick felt himself relax minutely, relieved that he wouldn't have to kill her for trying to skewer him with a sword.

Wrong thing to think.

She was there, dagger in one hand and sword in the other, screeching at the top of her lungs as she swung and cut. He took the first strike as a burning line of pain across his chest, barely blocked the second with his own blade, and rolled backwards into the hall to avoid the kick to the balls that she hid behind the initial attacks. He landed on his feet, growling at the fresh cuts along his shoulder from the trip he just taken over the modified hatchet belonging to one of the madmen.

No time for that though, because he had to duck another swing of the sword. Snarling, he grabbed at her wrist with his free hand and slashed at her with the ulak in his other. She jerked backwards. His blade left only a shallow gash down one shoulder to her opposite hip. He followed up on the advantage of being inside her reach and reversed his swing, catching her an awkward blow to the temple with the handle of the ulak in his open palm. She let the momentum of it carry her back and around and she spun on her heel, blood-covered wrist slipping through his hand, and drove her dagger down into the meat of his shoulder. The blade skidded off his shoulder blade and tore another line of pain halfway down his back.

He roared in fury and yanked on her wrist, pulling her out of her spin and backwards into his arms. She shrieked in answer and threw her head back. If she'd been a little taller, she'd have broken his nose. His lip split and he tasted his own blood. The dagger in her free hand found a new home in his thigh.

The whole world went red

He dropped his ulak and grabbed for her dagger hand before she could pull the weapon free of his leg. Squeezing both wrists until he felt bones creak and grind, he endured the writhing and kicks until her weapons dropped from nerveless fingers. Spitting and writhing, the girl fair deafened him with her howling as he pinned her hands under one elbow long enough to wrap his fingers around her neck.

Her shrieks turn to hoarse gasps as she fought to get her hands free or her legs in a better position to kick his ribs in. He'd forgotten to find a crotch guard before the fight started. He managed to hold onto her through the pain though. Slamming her up against the wall while he caught his breath helped.

Gradually her struggles eased. The scent of her insanity gave way to cold steel. Not the desperation most of his victims gave off, but he'd take what he could get. It gave him a certain satisfaction to know that he could end this now. No more crazy little girl. No more cussing in a language he didn't know. No body to speak for his having been here, killed here. Nobody.

His animal reared up, fangs bared and a hiss of its own burning through his veins. And for once, while the sensation of it disagreeing with the man wasn't unknown, its actions were unprecedented. He could feel the thing in his mind, the blow of a giant paw laying his rage out on the ground and pinning it there. There were never words between himself and his animal, but he had the feeling it was trying. _No_ , it told him, _we're not alone anymore_.

The man lay there, stunned by surprise. They'd always done fine alone. It was when they got tangled with others, with fucking crazy women just asking to get themselves killed, that the trouble hit.

_No._

The man grunted and tried to get his metaphysical ass off the metaphysical ground. Another swat, this one full of claws that flayed his chest to the bone, sent him back down. _No_ , came the growl. _Not alone. She is the match, the counterpart. Keeps up and we keep up with her._

The man couldn't help it. He fought. It was what he'd been born for, and it was how he lived. There was no submission in him. Alpha Furyan meant top of the pile, head of the pack, whatever analogy fit, but it did _not_ fucking mean that he just rolled over and showed his neck. Not even for his animal.

The animal sat on him and flicked him in the face with its tail. Smug superiority rolled off it in waves as it made its point. He was _already_ on his back, throat exposed. And it would not suffer him killing the girl.

The man still struggled, but he was weaponless and pinned and the animal's attention wasn't on him anyway. It laid down, draping itself over his chest, and stared off at something in the middle distance.

He could feel it in his mind, reaching past the rage. The next thing he knew, his hands had loosened. The hellcat he'd been slowly suffocating was silent. Surprised, he checked for a pulse with the hand around her neck. It beat. Fast, but it beat. Her eyes were open and the insanity that had raged behind them was gone, replaced with something he couldn't identify. He couldn't tell by her scent either. Even the steel was buried under the general stench of the room. At a loss, refusing to apologize or explain himself, he stared at her through his goggles and waited for some sort of reaction. 

Finally, after a long moment, she coughed and reached up to rub her throat. He moved his hand away so she could get to it. A tiny smile worked its way across her face. "The jaguar likes me. Wouldn't let you take your chance."

He dropped her and stalked off towards her bunk.

She caught up with him as he exited, arms full of EVA suits. Giggling, she accepted the one he shoved at her. She'd found her sword again. Even managed to wipe the blade clean on something. She'd also picked up a wicked looking ax and stuck it through her belt. Her vest hung open, but she'd scrounged something to tie the shirt beneath it shut, leaving only the bared glimpse of bloodied skin showing.

She fell into step next to him as they headed for the airlock, only stopping the giggles long enough to warn him to breathe carefully as they got near. He understood when they turned the corner. The other ship's airlock was much larger than the Destroyer's. It looked as if the Reavers had simply fitted one over the other and then latched on. Whatever they'd done had damaged the air supply in the lock. He could feel the drag in his lungs.

He made it halfway across the space before he noticed that she wasn't next to him anymore. Turning, he found her, balanced with one foot in her suit, the rest of it in a heap around her, glaring at the sword and ax in her hands. She glanced up. For a half a second he thought she was going to hurl them at his head. Instead, she looked back down at her hands and muttered something in Chinese. He had a feeling it wasn't anything complimentary.

"Just set them down," he grumbled, slinging his suit over his shoulder as he went back to her.

She glared at him. "Don't like leaving them. Her trophies. She fought for them. Don't want to give them up."

"Then we'll come back for them."

She shook her head. "Can't. Need to leave ship to retrieve radion accelerator cores. More efficient to take them directly to the _Hound_ , as they need to be outside of that ship as well to put them in. Given damage to the bridge of the Painwalker ship, likelihood of being able to return for personal effects before catastrophic systems failure is five-point two three percent. That is assuming that the Reaver ship does not blow first, considering we are about to remove the fuel supply of a ship still under power."

God truly did enjoy pissing on his head. It was the only thing he could come up with in reply to that, in his mind or out loud. She gave no indication of having heard, still staring at the weapons in her hands and grumbling under her breath. Heaving a sigh, Riddick reached for them, slowly and carefully, hoping it wouldn't set off another fit. It didn't. He felt his animal, his jaguar, rumble in satisfaction. Closing his hands over hers, he tugged gently. "You can get new weapons. You don't get another life."

"But," she looked up at him with eyes full of unshed tears, "this is sword she took first time she killed Reavers. First time she truly took care of someone else instead of gibbering in the corner."

He tugged again. "And as much as I love that you're crying over blades, it doesn't change what you just told me. Imminent fiery death, remember?"

She pulled against him for just a moment longer before relenting and loosening her grip on the handles with a whispered. "Knew it had to be, but don't have to like it. Didn't want it to be."

Riddick's eyebrows climbed. He knew she caught the curiosity firing in his brain by the way she twitched and hunkered in on herself. "We get safe little girl, you got a lot of questions to answer."

That snapped her out of it. He actually kind of liked it. Poking at her for a reaction might be the equivalent of stepping barefoot into a pile of scorpions, but seeing what she'd do was always worth it. She didn't disappoint. " _L_ _iu kuoshui de biaozi he houzi de ben erzi_! She is a woman grown, not a _ni zi_!"

Whatever the first part meant, he figured the last one out from context, and laughed as he turned and buried the blades in the body of a nearby Necro. The man didn't twitch. "Still smaller than me," he said. His animal rolled over on its back, then flopped over onto its side, huffing in amusement.

Looking up, he saw the hint of a knowing smirk on her face and groaned inwardly. Making friends with his inner beast, was she? Without his say so?

"The jaguar likes her," she giggled and reached down to finish putting on her suit. "Tried to help her when the river and the girl and the weapon merged. _Did_ pull her out when he would have killed her." The second foot was in the suit now, but she was having trouble keeping the arms straight while managing the helmet hooked to the back.

He laughed and reached over to help when she growled, letting his thoughts speak for him. This could be useful, talking to her in his head, not needing to give away his position with actual words. If only she could talk back the same way, he'd never need vocal chords again around her. Which was good. She'd tried to crush them once already.

"And he returned the favor," she muttered, getting her second arm into the suit. "But in answer to the other unspokens, he will have to wait. She is too near the insanity still and needs time to regain equilibrium before she can speak on it without going...sideways again."

He snorted and left her to the final fastenings while he maneuvered himself into his own suit. "Sideways is a mild word."

"Accurate. Was no longer moving forward in thought. Not backward either. Up and down indicate enlightenment or stupidity and neither condition was in effect. Therefore, sideways." She caught at the back of his suit and held the helmet free as he shrugged into the sleeves, then turned and headed for the Reaver ship.

Riddick growled and did up the fastenings as quick as he could, not liking the idea of her being out of his sight or reach in such an unfamiliar place. His animal huffed again and he faltered mid-step as the thought sank past the surface of his mind. What was this girl _doing_ to him?

"She apologizes. But they need to hurry. Imminent fiery death approaches." She stopped and looked back at him, face unreadable, scent mostly contained by the suit. But he was starting to get hints of apples and rain again and decided to take it as a good sign. Anyway, she was right. He'd had enough brushes with death for a lifetime; he didn't want to add nearly getting blown up on two mismatched spaceships from opposite ends of the galaxy to the list of things that almost killed him.

>>><<<

The removal of the fuel cells ended up being the easiest part of the day, despite the fact that she'd told him the ship was still trying to use them. Apparently a large cargo vessel, it had banks of the things, ready and waiting. Which, given what he'd pieced together about the Reavers and what he saw of the main hold before the girl found the button for the floor hatch and the radiation shields for their hands, was the only reason the ship was still running.

She explained in bits and pieces as they stepped over the little makeshift campsites and bits of half gnawed corpses strewn across the floor of the bay. Private vessels stopped at fuel stations scattered all over the systems, or 'Verse as she called it, and picked up canisters were then inserted into their fuel banks. But since the stations were essentially just selling fuel rods in adapters of differing sizes, not fuel rods of different sizes themselves, it would be possible to take the cores out of the much larger canisters on the Reaver ship and fit them into the ones on the merc ship.

He left the process of removing them to her. She inched along the ship, examining the fuel hatches with a cocked head and such a listening posture to her body that he knew she wasn't just looking at them with her eyes.

"He is correct," she said over the comms. "Some have been damaged. Reavers operate without containment. Suicide, but they do not truly wish to live anyway." She nodded and waved him over, handing him one of the shields and pointing at the latched set around the hatch. "Open and pull _very_ carefully on handle within. Will release canister. She will remove rod when they reach the _Hound_."

She moved on without checking to see if he'd follow her directions. He growled. Whipped. He was whipped by a girl-woman not half his size and the scariest part was _not_ that it wasn't new; it was that he didn't mind.

She giggled.

They ended up pulling five canisters. She tied four of them together in pairs with something she'd taken from the belt of her suit. Spacer's cord, it looked like. She left the last loose as she handed the others to him. He gave her a look for that, but she ignored him and scrambled past; down and around to the belly of the Reaver ship. He'd growled and followed, dodging the mangled and burnt husks of bodies that had been strapped down here and there and cursing this end of the galaxy in general. If he met a one sane person here, he'd be surprised.

He cursed her especially when he missed his grip coming around the bottom of the ship near where it met the Destroyer. Should have at least made her take one of the pairs. Then he wouldn't have to risk floating off into space. She was waiting for him though, catching him by the foot to drag him back. She was laughing at him, even if he couldn't hear it or smell it. He snarled. "We get shipside _ni zi_ , there's gonna be a talk about who takes the lead."

She shook her head but didn't say anything for the moment. Instead, she pointed at the hull of the Destroyer. There, just centimeters outside the forced seal the Reavers had made, was a length of spacer's line. He followed it with his eyes and wanted to sigh in relief. At least they hadn't lost the _Hound_ in all the mess.

Getting down to it and moving the fuel rods from one set of canisters to the other wasn't so hard, they just had to be careful. It just took too long. By the end of the process, Riddick wanted nothing more than to wash all the blood off and out of the suit. He figured killing for a shower would be acceptable at this point; the extra blood would come off same as the rest.

The girl ignored him, going about her business with the cores, pulling the first four from their canisters and playing some sort of three-part puzzle game to get them set into the merc ship. That done, she crawled over to where he was waiting and handed him the last of the Reaver's canisters. He looked from it to her, eyebrow up, and grunted. "What's this for?"

"To throw." She grinned and pointed at the tail of the Reaver ship, maybe a hundred meters above them. He could see some sort of rotating machinery there, spinning slowly. "Knock out the last of the grav boost. Containment that allows ship to move forward as well. Imminent fiery death has not occurred yet. Blow the ship for certain."

It sounded like a plan to him. No point in leaving evidence, at least not intact. So he hefted the canister, took aim, and gave the thing a very calculated and forceful shove. It drifted off course just slightly, but still hit the main mass of his target. A few seconds later the apparatus stopped, the mechanics started to twist and grind, and the Reaver ship started imploding from aft to nose. The Necro ship followed shortly after. He figured it was probably the best thing he'd seen since he'd roasted a horde of biorapters crawling all over a skiff and left a planet of darkness and terror behind.

Fucking beautiful.

>>><<<

They didn't run into trouble again until after they boarded the ship. Engine startup went all right, after a couple of hiccups. He remembered most of what she'd shown him. Once she was sure he had it down, she left for the bridge. What followed then was a flurry of barked orders over the shipwide comms on her part, grumbling on his, and a good deal of cussing. Finally, the engine spun up. She went through the checklist, and any doubts he'd had about her self-claimed title of Pilot were thoroughly trashed. Whether she could land them anywhere had yet to be seen, but at least they were moving.

All he'd wanted after that was a shower. He'd seen a communal head on the first inspection of the ship, before the crazy girl popped out of a box and started screaming and killing. He was beating tracks for it when he nearly ran right over the top of her. She came out of the bridge at a fast trot, already undoing the vest.

He grabbed her by the shoulder as she tried to get around him. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Clean," she snapped as charcoal and insanity crept through the air. "Covered in blood. Drowning in it," she tried to pull away again. "Can smell it. You can smell it. She gets smell from you. Feedback. Eternal loop. Must be _clean_!" Now there was panic on top of everything else.

But he'd had a shit day, had nearly been killed by and nearly killed a crazy little woman with more bloodlust than common sense. Enough was enough.

"Sure. Shower," he rumbled, "Me first."

At some point he knew he'd learn better Nest of scorpions and all. Turning out the lights and walking blind into a darkened coring room. Take the pick of fucking analogies. Didn't matter. She hit a nerve cluster in his shoulder and sprinted down the hall before he even knew she'd moved. He ran after her, grabbing her around the waist and tossing her back behind him. She hooked a hand around his ankle as she fell. He got an up close and personal look at the deck plates, just before she literally _ran_ over him, planting bony heels in his spine. He roared and reached, but she was lept, somersaulting through the air and landed just out of reach.

Cursing and spitting, he lunged up and forward, catching her again and rolling with her until they slammed into the door to the head. She writhed in his arms, planting a foot in his balls and an elbow in his jugular. The shock of it doubled him over. He cursed himself again for forgetting to armor up before letting the psycho drag him all over the Necro ship.

She shrieked as he crushed her, involuntarily but inevitable. A set of claws raked over his face and he felt the goggles go. His eyes were open. He roared in pain as he got a face full of one of the lights at floor level. That loosened his grip enough that she was able to wiggle out. She ducked into the head and the door slid shut behind her as he scrabbled for his goggles and cursed at the top of his lungs.

"Dammit girl!" Riddick lurched to his feet and pounded on the door pad. It slid open to reveal the last of a bare foot slipping into the shower stall. The shower door nearly took his fingers off when he grabbed for it. "Get the fuck out of there!

"No!" The vest flew over the door and hit him in the face. He snarled and balled the thing up. Maybe she'd get the point if he just punched _through_ the door. The tatters of her shirt came next. About that time his brain shut down. He could see her silhouette through the fogged glass, slim and mostly naked. Blood rushed, but it wasn't upwards.

"She hears you. Broadcasting." There came the belt and the ties she'd used to bind her pant legs. "Looking at her like _they_ looked at her. Covetous. Wanting." The words were a snarl that cut through the haze of lust. His animal sat up, interested in the change in her voice. "Called it observation. Pretended to be clinical. Weren't."

The pants flew over the door. He nearly lost himself again when he realized she wasn't taking anything else off. Not that he hadn't known that she didn't have any underwear. Nothing the merc woman owned would have fit her, and the Necros didn't carry anything like that.

But still.

Completely. Naked.

"Leave please," and now he could catch the smell of steel and citrus mixed with burned sugar and the sharp edge of her insanity. None of the apples and rain. Not even charcoal. "She wishes to be alone and crazy by herself."

Still growling, mainly on principle, because his blood went cold when he as he put the pieces of what she was saying into the puzzle of her past, Riddick dumped her bloody clothes in a heap and stalked out of the head.

He was in the cockpit when she finished about ten minutes later, going over the various screens and trying to figure out what the buttons and toggles meant. He smelt her first, a wash of apples and rain, the astringent smell of the insanity lingering, and over all, soap. He kept his back to the hall and waited for her to pass in a rush of pattering bare feet and thumping heartbeat. No fear. That was good.

The shower was good too. Considering that the water was hot and soap right there, he counted himself lucky. There'd been some slams he'd been in where clean just meant you had less grime on you than the next guy over. Something chimed at him a few minutes in and the water started getting colder. He growled but finished as fast as he could. Made sense, limited water supply and all. Didn't mean he had to like it. Just one more thing wrong with the day.

A lack of towels topped the list. How had he not thought to find something to dry off with? Riddick stood in the middle of the head, dripping wet, and snarled to himself. River. Her fault. If he hadn't been so wrapped up in his head, thinking of her and how messed up she was, it would've occurred to him that he had no fucking way to get dry and no fucking idea of where to find a towel.

Still growling, he hit the button for the outer door and braced himself, hoping the girl wasn't going to be around. It'd be just want he needed, an untouchable woman running shrieking from his naked self. Cherry on the fucking day.

Instead, he nearly tripped over a pile of cloth. Frowning, he knelt to take a closer look. It was a towel. Sitting on top of a stack of dark clothing that he guessed was the closest thing to his size he was going to find on this boat. A faint yell of "You owe her," came out of one of the bunks. He chuckled to himself before gathering the bundle up and stepping back into the relative safety of the head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: This is one of my favorite chapters of the original work, but man did the action need some work. I hope this reads better.  
> Someone also asked where the rest of the chapters are. Well, they’re sitting on my hard drive, screaming ‘fix me!’. Along with three other projects and all the new stuff I’m writing. I will edit and post as fast as I can, but I’m not tossing it all up wholesale without pulling some weeds first.  
> River, Firefly, Serenity are all © Whedon. Riddick is © Tuohy, the Wheat brothers, Universal Studios, and Vin Diesel. Dangit annyways. 
> 
> Translations:  
> kuangzhe de-crazy  
> Liu kuoshui de biaozi he houzi de ben erzi- Stupid son of a drooling whore and a monkey
> 
> ni zi-little girl


	7. Act One Chapter 7

_What big eyes you have  
The kind of eyes that drive wolves mad  
Just to see that you don't get chased  
I think I oughta walk with you for a ways_

**"** L'il Red Riding Hood," Amanda Seyfried

He found her in the infirmary, sitting cross-legged on the single bed, hands palm down on her knees. Apples and rain and charcoal filled the air, but the sharp scent of her killing mood was gone. A tray on the counter held full of bandages, tape, tubes of some sort of ointment, a suture kit, and a bottle of what he guessed was disinfectant.

She’d bandaged up most of her superficial wounds, leaving only a couple untended. Deeper bites and the gash over her shoulder where his blade had cut deepest on its trip across her torso. Her skin a luminescence to it that made him think she was paler than usual. But her breathing was steady and her heartbeat regular, so she couldn’t be too bad off. He took a moment just to look, letting the reality of their escape sink in.

“Others and others will come,” she murmured. “They look already. They never stop coming.” Her voice wavered. But neither her scent nor her breathing changed. Her heart rate picked up a bit, though.

“Already they look for the Hound. Notified that the captain had caught someone of interest.” She lifted her hands and turned them over. “One of the Tams? Both?? Or one of her crew? If the ship hadn’t been lost, how useful would the captive have been?”

Now she opened her eyes. Her breath hitched. “No avoiding them completely. Will have to deal with them. Except it is unlikely she can fry them with the engine a second time. The next ones will be both more cautious and more confident.” She closed her eyes and hummed. “You should leave her first chance you get. They will take you too. If not, they will attack your ears till they bleed. All blood. Every place a body can bleed. That is, if they don't decide to vivisect you first.”

Riddick snorted and moved over to the first aid gear. “What makes you think any of that is true?”

She shrugged. He could feel the movement against his back. The infirmary was that small. “Limited precog. She hears the river. It flows through her. Brings her voices. Mind calculates based on known quantities and variables. Probabilities figured, discarded. Clarity brought to bear. Likeliest course known.”

That made him stop, hands wrapped up in bandages as he tried to untangle the words. “You see the future? Or you do the numbers on what's most likely?”

She sighed and turned around. He felt her lift her leg, heard it as it brushed against his shoulder, fabric to skin; and looked over to see it come down next to his arm. The other leg bracketed him on the other side, and then a small hand reached over his shoulder to take the bandage he’d been trying to get around his upper arm. Pinning it in place, she braced her other hand on his shoulder and pointed. “Tape please.”

He handed it to her, then held still as she finished taping the bandage in place. She’d braided her hair back, but still brought her scent with her when she leaned close. Apples and rain. He’d never thought they’d smelt so good, separately or together. A tiny bit of charcoal. He figured that was par for the course when she was talking riddles. And vanilla. Warm, spiced. Like standing in front of a fire and knowing the cold was outside.

Her heart rate kept picking up, slow but steady. She finished what she was doing and leaned over just a little further. He could feel her breasts against his back, small but firm. He twitched involuntarily as her fingers traced the bite mark on his shoulder, grazing across his skin. Her heart rate spiked, then dropped again. Vanilla bloomed in the air, drowning out the charcoal and making inroads on the apples.

Something clicked in his head.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

“She will not.” The girl yanked back.

He spun and pinned her legs to his sides before she could pull those away too. “You want to. All over your scent and you know it.”

She didn’t try to reclaim her legs, but the look she gave him made him glad she didn’t have a shiv. She snorted. “Can hear you. Don’t need a blade.” She curled a fist and examined it as if seeing it for the first time. “Cannot stop the fist without releasing the legs. Release the legs and she will leave. Will no longer feel her around you.” She glared at him. “Which he has wanted longer than she has smelt of vanilla.”

He chuckled and was pleased to hear the thump of her heart tick upward again. She shivered, just a bit, as he ran his palms up her legs to her hips and anchored his fingers around them. “Beautiful,” he murmured, leaning forward and inhaling. “Never met a girl who could keep up like you do. Kill like I’ve never seen.”

She tried to inch away, but she was out of space on the mattress. “Nice words. She sees in your head. Still planning to leave. Don’t like cages. Don’t want ties.”

That brought him up short. He stared at her as his mind chewed through the implications of her statement. She was right. He didn’t want to be chained down. People died for knowing him. All the way back to that first girl and the General, he’d been trouble for those around him.

He was tired of looking out for strays.

Better to go it alone. Stay alive, stay free. Sure bet that it wouldn’t be any different in this set of solar systems than the last. She was right earlier when she said the authorities would take one look at him and throw him in the slam. He wasn’t cuddly, he wasn’t gentle, and he didn’t make people comfortable.

He tilted his head, watching her eyes track rapidly from side to side, as if she were reading at high speeds. Her face was still, her heart rate settled, even though the vanilla lingered strong in the air. “Wouldn’t have to be ties,” he said, to see how she'd react. His animal snarled at him. He knew he was lying even. But he’d cut ties before. He could do it again.

“Lies,” she hissed. “There are already ties. That would cement them.”

He opened his mouth. She clapped a hand over it. “No. She knows. She knows of sex and _sex_. Knows of fucking and making love.” She paused and flinched as she caught the mental images that had brought up in his head. “ _Ge ge_ and the Kaylee girl like the engine room. Companion has many ties, built by money for services rendered. Now she warms the Captain’s bed for free, for love. But ties are there and she calls on them in need. Stone woman with a heart sits in the bridge and stares at the pilot’s seat and remembers loving there.”

She leaned in close, eyes hot with fury as steel cut through the air. “The river brings it all to her. She can’t _not_ hear. Even the man alone in his bunk with skin mags and a case of baby oil. Her education has been forced. She swore she would _never_ gain actual experience unless the other was willing to tie himself to her.”

Her fingers were claws in his cheek as her hand clenched. She shook his head slightly. “The _hundan_ does not want ties. She will not cage the jaguar against its will.”

Somewhere inside, the animal part of his self roared, making its will known very clearly. The man aimed a kick at it.

And just like that, she was laughing again. “Nor will she chain the man, as stupid as he is being.” Her head tilted to the side, opposite the direction he’d tipped his, and she grinned. “Besides, he has never taken a woman unwilling. Isn’t about to start now.”

Riddick growled, a low rumble that worked its way up and out of his chest so slowly he could feel it vibrating his bones. She was right, fuck it. He’d never forced himself on anyone. And for all of what her scent was saying to the contrary, he knew she'd hold herself to her words. Crazy woman.

She snorted and let go of his face. “It’s a popular theory. And it is true. Words are what matter when thought and scent change so quickly. Betray so easily.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. The frustration in her voice matched his own. She looked like a cat that'd just gotten dropped in a pond. Pissed as fuck, mainly at her body for giving her away. She let him laugh for a moment before poking him in the shoulder, right next to the bite mark. “Needs stitches. Give her the bottle of disinfectant and the tray, please.”

And just like that, he sobered up. “No.”

She glared at him. "She knows what she’s doing. _Ge ge_ is surgeon. She learned from him. Has been helping stitch up the crew for years now."

He eyed her skeptically. Nothing in her scent smelled of lies. Apples and rain took over the vanilla and steel as she crossed her arms and huffed in irritation. He had to admit that it would be nice to have things taken care of properly for once. Provided she could do the job at all.

She snarled and poked him in the shoulder again. “The tray, please and thank you. And keep your insults to yourself.”

Still chuckling, he reached around and grabbed the tray. Things looked to be getting even more entertaining from here on out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: This chapter was originally eight THOUSAND words long. And switched POV after this. That is both insanely long, and not quite what I want for this story. So, I'm chopping it up here, and hopefully posting the next chapter (the other half) in a few days.  
> As always, they're not mine. Boo. And Hoo. 
> 
> Ge ge- big brother  
> Hundan-bastard/jerk/asshole


	8. Act One Chapter 8

_I like standing still for_

_That's just the wishful plan_

_Ask me where I come from_

_I'll say a different land_

_But I've got memories and_

_Travel like gypsies in the night_

“No Roots”, Alice Merton

It'd been the better part of a week since she and Riddick escaped. The _Hound_ was holding up well. Their greatest worry at the moment was food. Not for lack, but for taste. She'd never been able to get packets of powdered protein to resemble anything edible. She took comfort in the fact that her _ge ge_ was worse than she was. She refused to show the jaguar anything in the kitchen beyond what the foil packets were and the basic theory of using them. He’d laughed, but she noticed that he shied away from them as well. Luckily, they had plenty of canned goods, even some prefab meals in the order of add-hot-water-and-let-sit-then-stir. But those would run out in a few days. Then it would be time to truly embarrass herself.

The days after their escape passed in relative peace, although not without some friction. She waited to leave her bunk that first night. Avoiding him. She knew the truth in his words, just as he knew the truth in hers. What he didn’t know how much she questioned herself. Were her feelings, the strength of them, just the result of the fact that she’d _never_ before met a man she was attracted to? Or were they real?

Part of her cried, wanting what he offered. The other part, cool and calculating, noticed that from day one, he never treated her like a child. He treated her like a lunatic, yes, but she had been acting like a lunatic. She heard what he thought when he watched her fight. And later, as he fought alongside her. He saw a girl, a woman, whatever she was, who wasn't afraid of him. True, sometimes he thought the lack of fear was because she was too crazy to fear him, but he appreciated that she didn’t reek of lemons and oranges around him.

The weapon also pointed out that he trusted her, to a degree. Listened when she told him what to do to affect their escape. The emotional part of herself remembered how he scented her that in the Painwalker infirmary. How he came looking for her in the air ducts, then left her alone when she didn’t prove a threat. So many actions and reactions.

Above all, she knew the steady thrum of his need to be _free_. All his past ties ended in pain. How could she repay the trust he’d given by expecting him to chain himself to her?

So she waited till the dead of night, gathering her mind and making herself as sane as she could before stretching out, warming up, and heading for the cargo bay. Kyra’s coffin sat at the edge of the room. He must have done that while she was in her bunk that day. All the better then.

She took a couple running steps and leapt straight into _The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy_. She'd memorized had the music. It played in her head as she turned, stepped, twisted. It was harder, not having the proper shoes. The open grating of the cargo bay deck threatened to take her toes off a time or two, but it felt good. It felt right, to move like this. She knew she was graceful, knew she danced as much as fought. But this, _this_ was her past. Before the Academy and their needles and knives. This was who was born to be. A free spirit with the worlds at her beck and call. Theoretical physicist by day, prima ballerina by night. Why shouldn’t she have had it? She was a genius, albeit with a few added bonuses and a great many more pieces missing from the puzzle of her mind. She comforted herself with the fact that even though she didn’t have an audience or a place to publish papers she could still, for a few moments, be the old River.

Except she _did_ have an audience. He’d come on cat feet to see what happened to the presence of the girl who spent most of two days in her bunk. He'd woken because of the absence of her heartbeat. Quiet though it was through the wall between their bunks, his animal noticed when it vanished. He’d tracked her out here, nose filling with apples and rain, a bit of cool water, a little mint for flavor.

Now, silk was what she smelled, fed to her brain by his animal as starlit eyes watched her from the corridor. The animal was pleased. It nuzzled her behind the metaphorical ear before settling back on its haunches to watch and pass along its impressions. She faltered, just slightly, at that, and the man tensed. What he planned to do if she fell, she didn’t know. Neither did she want to know where that could lead. So she pretended not to notice him, finished the piece, and launched straight into another.

This one had no name. Bits of this and bits of that. A whirling dervish of movement as her weapon-self sought to drive out the girl and the girl clung to sanity. The river flowed. She took it, pulled it into herself, and used it to merge the two halves of her broken soul. The man was forgotten. The jaguar no more than a warm fuzzy presence in the back of her mind, his rumbling purr giving the time for her steps. She danced till her legs shook and every muscle burned. She stubbed her toes, twisted her ankle slightly at one point, and scraped her feet on the grating until the red shoes were no longer metaphors, but bloody reality.

And still she danced. She couldn’t not. There were only four voices in her head; none criticizing her. The joy of having complete freedom of movement without having to worry about judgment for the first time in years made her drunk on the feeling. She didn’t want to stop. To stop meant she’d go back. Back to being cracked down the middle, both halves pulling for a goal she that knew would break her heart. He would leave. She would do everything in her power to make it possible. She had her freedom now. What right did she have to take his?

And then he was there, one arm wrapping around her middle, the other blocking the strike aimed at his head. Had she been dancing? Or fighting shadows? Even in the present tense, the girl wasn’t sure. The weapon said that it didn’t matter what they called it; it was all battle. But at that moment silver eyes met hers. She felt her legs go out from under her as the pain in her feet caught up with her nervous system.

He caught her as she fell and carried her to the infirmary. There he settled her on the counter and started rummaging in cupboards. She sat, glassy eyed with exhaustion. her muscles quivering and burning. Stupid. Stupid girl. What possessed her?

She hadn’t worked out an answer before he scooped her up again, piled the bandages and other assorted gear onto her belly, and hooked the other arm under her legs. She managed to get a hand up to steady the pile, but she had nothing left in her for more.

Still purring, the jaguar wrapped itself around her mind. The man's thoughts wandered in all directions. She knew that he was choosing them carefully, the better to keep her from seeing what went on beneath the surface. She wanted to tell him he didn’t need to bother. She caught it all from the river and the jaguar. She wasn’t about to tell him that his animal was betraying his better interests. It was a fight he’d have to have with himself.

He didn’t speak the entire time he cleaned and bandaged her feet. She didn’t try to make him. She knew her scent was mixed, the silk gone now; apples and rain buried under blood and sweat and the malt of exhaustion. She held what needed held, lifted her feet and legs when his hands and mind told her to, and generally let herself be taken care of. She knew she'd be going barefoot for the rest of the trip. That was ok. Shoes weren’t worth the trouble anyway.

He thought she had a death wish. Sometimes he wasn’t far wrong. But she didn't want to break the comfortable silence. For once they weren’t fighting, mocking each other, or wanting things not mentioned in polite company. She snorted at the memory. Her _ge ge_ was the only polite company she knew these days, and the river told her she had a niece or nephew coming as the result of his goings on with the Kaylee girl. Polite company indeed.

She sat there after he finished, swaying slightly, feeling the purr of the jaguar in her head. The weapon told her that with her feet bandaged, she could probably last through a few more measures of dance. As if he caught the thought somehow, though she knew her scent hadn't changed, Riddick placed his hands on her knees and pressed down. His mind filled with threats he’d carry out if she tried to go back to the dance. All unbidden, she giggled. He frowned and opened his mouth to growl something at her. As much as she loved to hear his voice wash over her, she placed a finger on his lips. “She promises. She will attempt to let her feet heal.”

He growled and subsided. The jaguar flicked an ear and huffed in amusement. A gentle shove to her shoulder sent her flopping over backwards onto the bed. She couldn't find it in her to fight. There was no lust in his mind. No need. Just the intent that she let her feet and legs heal so she could pull more crazy shit like that at a later date. He’d enjoyed the show.

She snorted and squirmed back into the bed, ignoring the rush of blood the action set off in his nether regions and the images the jaguar sent her

He waited a moment, then left, pausing in the door to let his ungoggled eyes run over her body one last time. She waited a beat, another, then slipped out of bed and stretched again. Limping she’d be the next day, but not crippled. She fell asleep with her feet spread wide; her torso stretched flat in front of her, arms reaching for her heels.

The next few days passed mostly without incident. They didn’t need many words. He responded to the changes in her scent and heartbeat. She skimmed the surface of his thoughts and sometimes passed things on to the jaguar. Occasionally it seemed as if the jaguar passed them on to the man. He'd hand her a part she hadn’t said she needed, or learned a character came just a little quicker. She did her best to cram as much knowledge of the bridge into him as she could, trying to prepare them both for the day she dropped him somewhere populated.

Every once in a while he thought of trying to take the _Hound_ from her and going off on his own, but he remembered what she’d said about needing two to fly. She’d told the truth, but strictly speaking, he could have managed it alone. So long as he wasn’t being chased, or having issues with reentry of an atmosphere, or any of a hundred problems that would require hands in the engine room and hands in the bridge.

As a consequence, she taught him and he learned. His mind was exceptional. Weeks of the aforementioned time awake in cryo meant that he’d had the option of going crazy or keeping himself in order. The animal helped for sure, but the man had had an equal part in it. The wonder wrought between them was a balm to be near. The ability to move, instead of being locked in a stationary position, helped. When he dragged the weight bench out to the center of the hold on the third day, she laughed, patted him on the shoulder, and went to fetch some athletic tape she’d found in one of the empty bunks. He took it with a raised an eyebrow and she shrugged, telling him there was a punching bag in that bunk as well and he would probably need the tape. He started wrapping his knuckles and she left him to it. They kept it dark in the public areas of the ship, just light enough that she wouldn’t trip over something with her stiff feet, and she wanted to draw.

She sat in her bunk with the light on while he worked out his excess energy on the weights and then pulled the punching bag out and hung it from a beam. She didn’t want her scent to give her away, watching the play of muscles in his arms and shoulders, and she hoped the longer she stayed out of sight the better he would forget that she wasn’t nearby.

It wasn’t comfortable, living like this with the said and unsaid between them, but they’d manage somehow. She was surprised he hadn’t resorted to Jayne measures to keep his libido down. Then again, that would mean she’d get the brunt of whatever went through his head along the way, so she chose to just be grateful instead.

Eventually she gave into temptation and wandered down to the bay to sit on a bench near the weapons locker. If she planned to let this man go, even if what she felt wasn’t forever, she wanted to get an eyeful while she could. Something in the rhythm of his punches spoke to her. Without thinking about it, she started calling time, using flight deck terms instead of numbers. He stopped, surprised. She shoved a mental image of what she wanted at the jaguar. It snorted, amused at the idea of the animal helping teach human things, but agreed. After a moment, the man seemed to catch on. After a brief nod, he returned to the bag. She drilled him in terminology, and he’d replied with English translations, or the appropriate response to the situation, or whatever button needed to hit next, and between the physical exertion and the mental, they’d both managed to ignore the smell of vanilla in the air.

The pattern of their days was set after that. She did slow katas instead of dancing at night. He watched her, checked her feet and re-bandaged them with clinical impersonality. She would meditate in her room or draw, then drill him in flight protocols while he beat the _goushi_ out of the punching bag during the day.

Sometimes she found him seated next to the coffin, a portable cortex screen in his hand and lips moving silently. She never stayed in the bay then. It felt like intruding. He never commented on it. Nonetheless, she wouldn’t let him actively fly the ship, however much he learned. They were on a set course with a limited fuel supply and no leeway for experimentation.

>>><<<

Tonight, River sat at the table in the galley, feet propped up on a chair opposite her and crossed at the ankles. Her right hand lay over her stomach, the left elbow rested on the table. Her head lolled along the back of her chair as she closed her eyes and listened for the river. It was softer here, this far away from people. Some of the voices were indistinct murmurs. Others were loud enough she could make out words here and there. The clearest were those she’d met in person, or those with strong intentions. At the moment, she listened for a set of voices that matched both criteria. She knew they were out there. She hadn’t been able to hear them over the screaming of the Painwalkers, but she knew they were out there.

And not here.

But half her attention stayed on the ship, instead of out in the stars where it should be. River sighed and shut her mind to thoughts of the man. He was in his bunk, dreaming of jungles and a stern-faced woman with feathers braided into her hair. It was loud, and she dove back into the river again to avoid having to think on him.

A memory of another dream or a current one, she wasn’t sure. But it woke her, and she came down to the galley to try and put it out of her mind. Stupid to be jealous of the hold the dream woman had on him. Just plain stupid. She gave the unopened whiskey bottle on the table a little shove and sighed before dropping back into the river again. Wandering thoughts did not help her find the voices she sought.

How long she’d sat there, she did not know. But she found the voices. And nearly wept at the pain in them. How she wanted to reach out with physical arms and touch them, tell them she still lived. That she was ok.

Instead, she sat and listened as they dreamed in images of death and sorrow. Even the little one knew something was terribly wrong in her home. Her dreams were full of great darknesses that reached up to swallow her. Her cries brought the mother, a smooth voice of velvet and steel that whispered and comforted as she wrapped a blanket around the little body and brought her to the galley. The man with a girl’s name was there, guitar in his lap; a mute clipped around the neck, and a bottle of whiskey sitting on the table. River’s lips twitched as she realized why she sat as she did.

The guitar was a fine thing, tiger maple and ebony. Mother of pearl inlay and pegs. The strings were new, tuned just so. His fingers ran over the frets and plucked at the strings, quiet as could be, until he noticed that he had company. Kicking out a free chair, he stood to go dig in the pantry. A few moments later he came back with a cup of some pureed fruit and a bitty spoon. The woman gave him a wry smile. Big tough merc, he groused, and picked his guitar back up.

A shift in the air around her nearly jolted the girl out of the river. She held still and clung to the current, holding her hands still in mimicry of the man’s in an effort to keep her mind in that far distant room. She reached and wrapped a tendril of thought around their minds before opening her eyes to meet glinting silver orbs not ten inches from her own. The Riddick tilted his head, nostrils flaring as he tried to figure out her scent.

She wasn’t in the mood to enlighten him and explain that when charcoal and fire mixed she was only present in body; her mind was quite literally wandering. Instead she moved her hands, one over her stomach, plucking and strumming at invisible strings; while the other splayed over frets and changed the notes as needed. It wasn’t a song with a name. He was playing something vaguely like a lullaby he’d heard as a child, as the woman fed the little girl and rocked in time to the music.

She gave a little lunge and snapped her teeth when the Riddick reached for her hands. “Leave be,” she whispered. “The girl flows with the river and finds her crew. Man with a girl’s name has received proof of forgiveness and plays now for the child to sleep and dream of stars.” She jerked her head at the whiskey bottle. “Drink if you must. Forget about jungles full of headstones. _Guan ni ziji de shi. L_ eave the girl.”

He curled a lip and growled at her, but didn’t try to touch her again. Neither did he reach for the whiskey. Instead he sat in the chair at the head of the table and folded those long-fingered hands beneath his chin. She closed her eyes and ignored him. The child was quieting and so too was the music. Finally his fingers moved, but only to have something to do. The strings were silent.

The musician's thoughts turned from the child asleep in her mother’s lap to another girl child. Woman. Crazy. They hadn’t found hide or hair of her. Every contact Inara or any of the rest could scare up said she’d dropped out of the ‘Verse. He was a tracker with nothing to track, and it was ticking him off something fierce.

The Captain was all sorts of violent lately. The Doc had learned to shoot. Nigh on five years in the black and the pretty boy finally wanted to learn to handle a gun. Better late than never, but what the Doc would _do_ with the knowledge was a thing that didn’t sit well on the brain. The woman across from him was still a solid rock, the one you tied off to when you started drifting. Lucky for all a them that the Captain still listened when she put her foot down. Between her and Inara, they had him fairly well managed. Kept him from getting them all shot or blown up many a time since they’d started their hunt.

For a moment he wished for Wash, or Book, or even better, both. As much as the pilot annoyed him. he’d made Zoe smile. Even years later, she didn’t crack the facade for anyone but Sierra. Losing the Moonbrain just made it worse. As for Book? Well, the man knew things. Things no Shepherd should know. Had a way of telling it to a man straight too, and a good spotter for the weights. Damn shame he weren’t around.

River didn’t realize she'd spoken until the jaguar gave her the twist of Riddick's mind as he tried to sort out her words. The intrusion shook her out of the river. She sighed as she let her hands drop into stillness again. The man across from her had his hands flat on the table as he rose carefully, like she was an animal about to bolt.

She snorted at the mental image and laid her head back on the headrest. “Apologies. She swims the river. Found her crew.” Something tightened in her chest. She clenched her hands together in memory. “They scour the stars and court death to find her. No trail to track. No scent. No footprints. No convenient snags of cloth on broken branches.” The thing in her chest kept squeezing. She swallowed hard. “They will kill themselves looking.”

The Riddick rumbled without words and sat back down. “That so?”

His voice was flat, but his mind fairly yelled that it was too soon, too soon. He hadn’t resigned himself to giving her up just yet. The animal didn’t want to give her up at all. He kept himself in the chair by strength of will alone. One wrong move from her would see the animal winning, table flying and those arms carrying her to his bunk, never to emerge again.

River allowed herself a moment to dream, to pretend she could allow such a thing. A draft of warm vanilla crawled like lava down her spine. Cursing to herself, she placed the image she’d found of her _ge ge_ and Kaylee in the forefront of her mind. The disgust effectively wiped out the vanilla. She never needed to see her brother like that. It reminded her that he was human.

Riddick stiffened when her scent changed. She wanted to explain that it wasn’t him, but it was in an oblique way. This way was better anyhow. So she raised her head and looked him in the eye. “Will have to contact them sooner than previously thought, if only to keep them from doing something monumentally stupid.”

He snorted and reached for the whiskey bottle, unscrewing the cap and taking a long pull. “That so?” He was trying not to let his anger show in his body or voice, but his mind roiled with it. She'd just strengthened his resolve to leave. While part of her was grateful, the other part wanted to throw herself at him in apology. Sternly, she sat on both parts. He was his own; she could not ask him to change for her. He had not asked her for change either. Yet. Would he? Would she agree?

That forced her mind down another path, a different current, and suddenly she wanted to run. Run to her bunk, run to the bridge and turn the ship around; anything to get away. Fear bloomed in her. The air took on lemons and limes and all manner of citrus fruit as she sat glassy eyed and panting. It was just a trickle of thought, triggered in memory by the mental image of Simon.

Cotton and wool, mind tied up with the body. What had happened to her, he wondered. Was she ok? Was she still stable? Would she be the River of the last few years if they ever found her again? They would find her. They had to find her. And once they found her, he’d do everything in his power to keep her from getting taken again.

Everything.

Her skull bounced when it hit the deck. She didn’t even squawk, so surprised was she. The man was up and around the table before she fully registered what'd happened. One of her flailing arms caught him behind the knee. He let the accidental motion carry him to the floor as he knelt and reached for her shoulders.

No! Not what she needed. Not more protection and worry! With a hoarse cry she curled in on herself, away from him and under the table. She to stop the rising tears, but she’d been holding back for _so_ long. Couldn’t she have this one thing? This moment?

Then he was there again, dragging the chair away and crouching to reach under the table. He wouldn’t fit, so he pulled her out as gently as he could. His mind said the words he refused to speak. She couldn’t answer. Couldn’t do anything but shake and sob and chant “ _Wo xiang mei er, mei xin, bian shitou,_ ” through a broken soul.

Muscled arms rearranged her across his legs. His jaguar appeared at the forefront of her mind's eye. It dropped out of the tree where it had been watching the proceedings and paced over to her like she was prey, not a girl. She did her best to ignore it, hands over her ears so she couldn’t hear the angry rumble of the man’s voice. She could feel it though, vibrating down to her bones, and she wondered at the fact that they weren’t melting.

The jaguar stopped just out of arm’s reach, crouching more than sitting. She knew she should brace herself for whatever was coming; but her mind wouldn’t stay put long enough to process any more than that. She was in Serenity’s infirmary, crazy and drugged. She was in the Academy, needles in her brain and in her eyes. She was in a cryo box, listening to the screams of strangers being eaten alive. She was everywhere but the present and in every place she was she was not free to do as she wished. She was a prisoner, no matter where she went and what she did.

Her head bounced again, this time from a metaphysical swat instead of a physical action. Her vision cleared just enough to show her the jaguar standing over her, breath hot in her face and teeth bared, demanding that she _get up_. Pull her mind together and get the fuck up before the man did something truly drastic. She scrambled backwards, ramming into the tree. The one jungle tree in an open empty place, rich in scents but spare in everything else. The big cat followed, one huge paw in front of the other. Out of room, she hunter for another path to escape. The jaguar reared back and raised another forepaw in readiness.

River shot forward, cracking her skull against a very _hard_ forehead. She cried out, clutching at her skull. Riddick jerked back before he could get brained again, nearly dropping her in the process. She wavered, tipped, and found herself gathered back up again as her balance started to go. Panting, she pressed an ear to the landslide in his chest and clutched at his arms for support. They tightened infinitesimally before loosening and turning her so she could meet his eyes.

“What the fuck?” he muttered. She wanted to giggle at the confusion on his face and in his mind. “The fuck was that all about?”

She stiffened and nearly lost herself in the river again as her short-term memory caught up with her. The jaguar lifted an experimental paw. She threw herself back into the present. The scent of lemons still swam through the air, mixing oddly with charcoal and steel. That surprised her, until she thought it through. Of course she was angry. Her _ge ge_ wanted to wrap her back up like a doll, dose her at the slightest hint of instability, and generally treat her the way he had that first year they'd lived on _Serenity_. She needed it then, at least some of it, but since the Miranda wave went out and the pea removed from her pile of mattresses, she’d been much better. She'd had to take drastic measures, but she’d convinced him she was saner _off_ the drugs. Meditation was usually enough to keep herself on an even keel these days. But he feared what capture may have done to her.

Her lips lifted in a silent snarl. That wasn’t what she needed. What she needed was for someone to take her at face value and, if all else failed, hit her over the head to knock her out of the fits.

The jaguar huffed a laugh. The man rumbled something at it, but she didn’t catch what he said. She could guess, though.

Riddick was still waiting for his answer. Patiently too, all things considered. River took a deep breath, then another. “Cotton and wool. Like a china doll.”

His face twisted in confusion.

She tried to sort out her words. “Girl found the crew. Found her _ge ge_. He plans to do anything. _Anything_ to get his _meimei_ back. And keep her.” Another breath. Her fingers clenched, nails biting into his arms. “Plans to do anything needful to keep her. Keep her safe and sane. Forgets that she’ll never be entirely sane. Forgets she did fine these past three years, six months and eleven days. Forgets she talked him into weaning her off the psych drugs.” She stared up at him, at the stars taken down from the sky and set in the face of a killer. Who else’s face should they be in? Who had paid for them in blood? “Is back to thinking of her as the mostly helpless lunatic he rescued.” She shook her head and looked at her knees.

The jaguar yawned and lay down in front of her. The man tilted his head to one side and lifted a hand to run through her hair and examine her skull for bumps. She heard his mental reaction when he found the needle marks and the scar at the base of her skull instead. Rage roared through him. She cried out as his fingers clenched involuntarily and got the forming goose egg too.

He let go, growling under his breath.

She relaxed slightly. “She does not…” she couldn’t finish the sentence. Speaking meant she couldn’t take it back. Words were like stones. Solid, immovable. To say them was to commit to them. She'd just realized that she had no idea what she really wanted.

“She doesn’t what?” His mind worked through the possibilities, the jaguar offering suggestions. She shuddered. Things happened when the man and his animal agreed. Momentous things. A sudden vision of herself wrapped in steel and blood instead of wool and cotton bloomed in her imagination. She nearly cracked her head open again trying to escape. He growled and reached for her, but she was over the chair, under the table, and to her feet on the other side faster than he thought possible. The rumble in his chest was more animal than man. She made it out the door and down the hall before he finished shoving the table to the side.

But her torn feet betrayed her. He caught her just outside her bunk, grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around so he could pin her against the wall with his bulk. “She doesn’t _what_?” he growled again. She could feel him hot and hard against her hip. Could smell the vanilla rising around her.

“She doesn’t _know_!” River clenched her eyes shut and turned her head away so she wouldn’t lean forward and up into that snarling mouth. “She doesn’t know what she will do!” She scrabbled behind her with one hand as she shifted her hips to distract him. It was nearly her undoing. He groaned and dropped his head to her neck, lips grazing the skin at the edge of her tank top as he pressed his body against hers.

River gasped and nearly rolled her hips again. The jaguar was far too pleased with itself. Her weapon half looked on with increasing interest. She found what she was looking for and slapped the button for the door. It slid open behind her. She toppled backwards shoulder first as she twisted and pulled out of his grip. Completing the turn, she hit the lock on the interior side and dodged his outstretched hand as he tried to get to her before the door closed on his arm. He snarled in frustration.

She wept as she backed away towards the bed, flinching when he punched the wall outside and roared at her. Still crying, she crawled into her bed, wrapped herself in the blankets, and prayed to be made stone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: So. I am working on the edits for these in between two other writing projects and another edit that is full of whole-chapter-rewrites. I will try to update as often as I can, but I make no guarantees on regularity 😊
> 
> This is where I start making changes to flow, events, timelines, etc. I was very lax in my timekeeping the first go around. Now I have a program to help me keep it all straight. And some things needed to get tidied up for continuity later. The jaguar/man mix becomes more important from now on. As is the mental picture River builds of their surroundings in her head. And I plan to keep the UST coming for a while. Lots more fun that way. Hmm…Had a lot that I wanted to say as I edited this. It’s all gone now. Gah! So, onward!
> 
> As always, not mine!
> 
> ge ge- big brother  
>  goushi-dog crap  
>  Guan ni ziji de shi- mind your own business  
>  Wo xiang mei er, mei xin, bian shitou- I will close my ears and my heart and I will be a stone  
>  mei mei- little sister

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: Hello! It’s back. This story is being edited a chapter at a time and reposted as I get to it. As always, the characters and settings aren’t mine.


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